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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 




Photograph by Piltsbury 



Yosemite Fall 



THE 
TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

THE STORY OF A CHEERFUL JOURNEY 
THROUGH OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



BY 



ROBERT STERLING YARD 

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE 
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



Xa2 



Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



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SEP 19 1917 




IS 



>C1.A 4 75170 3 



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TO 
MARGARET 



FOREWORD 

Our national parks are really one part of our na- 
tional system of education— supreme examples of the 
workings of nature. They tell the history of the 
making of the continent, where the primal forces may 
yet be seen in action. They give a liberal education 
in beauty and in nobility. Men cannot think meanly 
in the presence of the canyons and cliffs, the moun- 
tains and the cataracts, of our parks. Men must 
think in large terms when standing face to face with 
nature in her noblest moods. 

Mr. Yard loves these playgrounds, natural museums 

and living laboratories of a fortunate people, and I 

join in the hope that they may become more really 

known as great schools. 

Franklin K. Lane. 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is to inspire an interest in 
the drama of world-making and an appreciation of 
the meaning of natural scenery. It is intended for 
children of all ages — young, old, and in between. 

It is not a scientific book, not a manual of study, in 
any sense; it is only a story. It will have served 
its purpose if those who read it find pleasure in the 
reading, learn of many things which they knew not 
of and little appreciated, and thereafter look with 
kindling eye upon the mountains, the rivers, and the 
valleys of their great land. 

This land is richer in scenery of sublimity than 
any other. Geology is the anatomy of scenery. To 
train the emotions to conscious and appreciative ex- 
pression is to increase measurably the sum of hap- 
piness. 

The fictional medium is my excuse for one conscious 
departure from fact. The leisurely excursion here de- 
scribed could not be compassed within a single vacation 
season. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. How It Happened 3 

It never would have happened if Margaret had not persevered. 

II, The First Ditch-Diggers 16 

How the glaciers helped make the Rocky Mountain National 
Park. 

III. The Mystery of the Mesa 44 

No one knows what became of the Cliff-Dwellers of the green 
table. 

IV. Wild Animals of Geyserland 63 

Elk, deer, antelope, bear, and bison live natural lives in the 
Yellowstone. 

V. The Education of Rocky M. Goat, Jr 87 

No other schoolhouse in the world is more beautiful than the 
Glacier National Park. 

VI. The Frozen Octopus 115 

Mount Rainier thrusts icy tentacles down among natural gar- 
dens of wild flowers. 

VII. What Happened to Mount Mazama 140 

Where it once stood now lies Crater Lake, the deepest and per- 
haps the bluest lake in the world. 

VIII. The Incomparable Valley 161 

But there is much more than the valley in the Yosemite National 
Park. 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 



PAGE 



IX. A Long Life and a Happy One i88 

Some of the trees in the Sequoia National Park were growing 
there when Pharaoh made captive the children of Israel. 

X. The Greatest Ditch in the World 213 

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado, in Arizona, is one of the 
world's most wonderful spectacles. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Yosemite Fall Frontispiece 

PAGE 

The greatest rock in America — El Capitan — rising 3,600 feet above 

the Yosemite Valley floor 2 

"Mother, where is the top of the continent?" asked Margaret . 5 

"Oh, take us, take us to the top of the continent, dear Uncle Billy ! " 10 

Margaret began to weep silently, while Jack kicked the piano-chair 11 

The General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park. The biggest 

and the oldest living thing 13 

Sundown at Grand Lake 17 

The Heart of the Rockies. Longs Peak from Flattop Mountain 

Trail 23 

Uncle Billy washed Aunt Jane's face with a handful of snow . . 25 

A full-grown brown bear 29 

Longs Peak (centre), Mount Meeker (left), and Mount Lady Wash- 
ington ^i 

The precipitous face of Longs Peak from a rock shoulder 13,000 

feet in altitude 35 

Hallett Peak in July. A typical Rocky Mountain Gorge ... 39 

A large beaver family has lived here for many generations ... 43 

She glanced upward and saw a strange face peering at her . . 49 

The canyon seen from Balcony House 55 

Lookout Mountain, highest point in Mesa Verde 57 

xiii 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Cliff Palace from across the canyon 59 

Sun Temple. Built on top of the Mesa 61 

One of the Yellowstone bison herds 63 

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Great Fall . . 65 

Upper Fall of the Yellowstone 67 

The Old Faithful geyser spouts every seventy minutes .... 71 

Blacktail fawn 75 

There are thirty thousand elk in the Yellowstone 79 

Many families camp all summer 81 

Yellowstone hot-water formations beautifully colored by microscopic 

vegetable algae 83 

Margaret screamed wildly and ran as she had never run before . 85 

Mountain-sheep 87 

Western end of St. Mary Lake 91 

Uncle Waggletoe 97 



(I ( 



In all Goatland, my dear Rocky,' said Uncle Waggletoe, 'you 

will see nothing grander than this spot'" 100 

Avalanche Lake under the Sperry Glacier 103 

Gunsight Lake east from Gunsight Pass 105 

Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, St. Mary Lake 107 

Former inhabitants of Glacier National Park 109 

Where Lake Ellen Wilson empties into Little St. Mary . iii 

Summit of Blackfeet Mountain 113 

The road to Paradise Valley 117 

The celebrated Nisqually Glacier .121 



ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

PAGE 

Measuring ihc speed of a glacier 123 

Looking down into a crevasse 125 

Exploring Nisqually's crevasses 129 

At the same time he slipped and disappeared 131 

(^n the Cowlitz Glacier 133 

Mount Rainier reflected in Mirror Lake 137 

The Lake of Mystery 143 

A pound trout is a small one 147 

The water is bluer than the darkest indigo 149 

"Just look for a moment over there at the Phantom Ship," inter- 
rupted Mrs. Jefferson 151 

The Phantom Ship 153 

The painted lava rim and Phantom Ship 157 

Half Dome rises 5,000 feet above the Yosemite Valley .... 163 

Mrs. Jefferson managed to keep up the mystery for nearly a week 167 

Cathedral Spires (centre) and Cathedral Rocks (right) .... 169 

\'ernal Fall 171 

Liberty Cap and Nevada Fall ' ... 173 

Many years ago the Yosemite Valley was the safe retreat of the 

Indians 177 

The Yosemite Valley 181 

Tenaya Lake, above the valley's rim 185 

It is a paradise of sfiuirrels 187 

Sequoia-tree about 1,500 years old 191 

General Sherman Tree, from south side 195 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 



PACE 



Bear cubs arc numerous and friendly 197 

A wonderful place to camp out 199 

Sunrise in the Giant Forest 201 

Sugar-pines in the Giant Forest 203 

Group of sequoias in the Giant Forest 205 

A fallen monster 209 

Suddenly a loud, gleeful shout brought the conference to a startled 

finish 211 

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River 217 

Sunrise over the canyon 219 

Indians above the rim 223 

The trail into the canyon 227 

On the brink of the river's gorge 229 

At the river's edge 233 

Thunder-storm brooding over the canyon 237 

Camping in the Grand Canyon 241 

"You little witch," she whispered, "I believe you know" . . 243 



THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 




Photograph by J. T. Boyeson 

The greatest rock in America — El Capitan — rising 3,600 feet above the Yosemite 

Valley floor 







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Photograph by Enos At ills 



THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 



HOW IT HAPPENED 



IT NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF MARGARET HAD 
NOT PERSEVERED 

MOTHER, where is the top of the continent?" 
asked Margaret. 
' The family was gathered around the library fire 
after dinner. There was still a half hour left before 
bedtime. The wind was howling through the bare 
trees on the lawn, and the snow was beating a tattoo 
ujDon the window-pane. But the Jefferson library 



4 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

seemed all the warmer because of the cold storm with- 
out. Uncle Tom had put a fresh chestnut log on the 
andirons, and it crackled merrily as the sparks flew in 
all directions. 

"Look out," said Aunt Jane, ** those sparks may 
scorch the rug. Jack, you'd better set up the screen." 

** Mother, where is the top of the continent?" asked 
Margaret. 

"Not that way, you bad boy!" cried Aunt Jane. 
"You've set it upside down." 

"What difference does it make?" asked careless 
Jack, thrusting his hands in his pockets. "It'll stop 
the sparks upside down, won't it?" 

Aunt Jane readjusted the screen and retreated, 
rubbing her pretty cheeks now glowing with heat. 
Even Jack admitted that Aunt Jane was pretty. 

"Mother, where is the top of the continent?" asked 
Margaret. 

"B-r-r-r!" grumbled Uncle Tom. "Do you hear 
that icy blast ? I tell you it's unchristian to send a 
fellow home such a night as this. Let me sleep on the 
lounge." 

"Why, of course you may," said Mother, looking 
indulgently at her handsome young brother-in-law. 
"We'll make you up some kind of a bed." 



HOW IT HAPrENED 5 

"He may sleep with me," said Jack condescend- 
ingly. "Only he's got to stay on his own side of the 
bed. If he doesn't, I'll kick." 




"Mother, where is the top of the continent?" asked Margaret 

"You'll kick anyway, you young mule," said Uncle 
Tom, "but I'd rather be kicked than walk a mile home 
against that storm." 

"Mother, where is the top of the continent?" asked 
Margaret. 

"Dear me, child," said Mrs. Jefferson, "if you did 
not get an answer you would go on asking that question 



6 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

in your sleep and put it to me again before breakfast. 
I'm sure I don't know where the top of the continent is, 
or what it is either. Who did you hear speak of it?" 

'*Oh, Uncle Billy told Daddy at dinner that it was 
where he photographed that bear," said Margaret. 
"He said the top of the continent was the most won- 
derful place in the world; I think it must be most as 
'stonishing a place as Fairyland. He said he saw a 
waterfall most a hundred miles high, and that there 
were things he called glaciers that dug ditches in the 
rocks more than a mile deep. He said there were lots 
of bears and deer there, and I think he said lions. 
Oh, yes, and there was a lake that had icebergs in it 
in summer, and you slept out under the trees, and 
there were millions and millions of mountains that had 
snow on them in August. He said you could run out 
for a few minutes in the morning and catch all the 
trout you could eat for breakfast, and that you rode 
on mules, and that there were trees a whole block 
thick and ever and ever so high, and that there were 
'normous big white goats with whiskers that climbed 
up rocks just like flies climb the wall, and there were 
boats on the lakes and " 

"Not so fast, child !" interrupted Mother, but Mar- 
garet was running too rapidly to stop all at once. 



HOW IT HAPPENED 7 

"It was all just too lovely except the bears. I 
wouldn't want to sleep under the trees with bears 
around. I'd want to — — " 

"I would," cried Jack. ''I'd shoot the bears. I'd 
just like to see a bear come for me when I was asleep 
under a tree. I'd jump up quick and send a bullet 
crashing right through his head. I would " 

"Like fun, you would!" put in Uncle Tom unfeel- 
ingly. "You'd run." 

"And how would you know^ he was coming if you 
were asleep?" asked literal Margaret. 

"Oh, I would know, all right," said Jack. "The 
Indians always do. I'd have a " 

"One at a time, children," commanded Mother. 
"Now be still for a few moments and let me talk. I 
know now what Uncle Billy meant by the top of the 
continent, but I think, dearie, that you have exag- 
gerated what he told Daddy. He was speaking of 
the week he spent last summer in the Glacier National 
Park. By the top of the continent he must have 
meant the very high mountains in the West. Uncle 
Billy came home so pleased w4th his week on the 
mountain-tops that he wants to go again next summer. 
He wants to spend three or four months in the West 
and see all the national parks." 



8 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Will he take me?" screamed Margaret, scrambling 
to her feet and rushing to her Mother. "Oh, will he, 
will he take me?" 

"Will he take me?" cried Jack, jumping up. "Oh, 
goody! Oh, great! Are there Indians there?" 

"Hush! Hush!" cried Mother, retreating before 
the assault. "No, of course he won't take you. Chil- 
dren cannot go to such rough places. I wouldn't let 
him take you." 

"Besides, he's going to take me," said Uncle Tom. 
"We're going to start the last week in May and go 
straight to the Yosemite so as to see the falls at their 
best." 

"Oh, take me, too, Uncle Tom, dear Uncle Tom!" 
cried both the children at once. It w^as Uncle Tom's 
turn to retreat, for their charge was vigorous. 

"Sorry, but I can't do it," said Uncle Tom em- 
phatically. "We're going to places where children 
cannot go." 

"But children do go to national parks," wailed 
Margaret. "Dorothy went with her mother to 
Messy Fur last summer, and she isn't as old as I 
am. 

"To — where?" demanded Aunt Jane. "Is that ex- 
traordinary messy place a national park?" 



HOW IT HAPPENED 9 

"Of course Messy Fur is a national park," Mar- 
garet stated with dignity, **for Dorothy told me so. 
It's awfully nice and spooky. You climb down under 
'normous cliffs, and' there's houses, old, old houses that 
people haven't lived in for millions of years. But the 
Indians say that ghosts live in them, and they will 
not go near them, and " 

"Oh, I know now," Mother interrupted. "It isn't 
anything messy at all, Margaret. Mrs. Jones went to 
the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado where 
those wonderful prehistoric cities were found." 

"But, Mother, how can it be a park if it is like 
what Margaret says?" protested Jack. "A park has 
benches and swans and things and you get ice-cream 
at the Casino. But Margaret says there are Indians 
out there. That can't be a park." 

"A national park, children," explained Uncle Tom, 
"is not like any city park. It is thousands of times 
bigger. There are a few hundred acres in our Fair- 
mount Park, for instance, but more than a thousand 
square miles in Glacier National Park." 

"Gee!" exclaimed Jack. "It must be a whopper 
then, for every square mile has six hundred and forty 
acres in it." 

"Oh!" said Margaret, appalled. They stopped a 



10 



THE TOP OF TILE ( OXTIXENT 



minute to multiply a thousand square miles by six 
hundred and forty. 

"Then," continued Uncle Tom, "there are other 
differences. A national park is left just exactly as 

nature made it. They 
don't cut trees or make 
lawns or put swans on 
the lakes. It is an 
enormous wild place 
that the Government 
leaves just as God de- 
signed it, because God 
made it so magnificent 
that it would be quite 
spoiled if men tried to 
improve it." 

"All wild and moun- 
tainy and jungly and full of animals?" asked Jack 
excitedly. 

"Just like that," said Uncle Tom. 
"Oh, I must go!" Jack exclaimed fervently. 
"Well, here comes Uncle Billy with Dad," said 
Mother. "Ask him to tell you more about the top of 
the continent." 

The children rushed for Uncle Billy with arms out- 




"Oh, take us, take us to the top of the con- 
tinent, dear Uncle Billvl" 



HOW IT HAPPENED 



11 



stretched, crying: **0h, take us, take us to the top of 
the continent, dear Uncle Bihy !" 

Uncle Billy and Uncle Tom were twin brothers, but 
they did not resemble each other in any respect. Uncle 
Billy was fair-haired and smooth-shaven, round-faced 
and jolly. Uncle Tom was slender and dark-haired, 
and wore a tiny young mustache, of which his older 
brother, Mr. Jefferson, made endless sport. He was 
quiet and studi- -_ 

ous. When the ^|k m 1- 

children wanted J^^^ 4 
a romp they 
sought Uncle 
Billy. When 
they wanted in- 
formation they 
asked Uncle 
Tom . Aunt 
Jane, by the 
way, was Mrs. 
Jefferson's 
younger sister, who was home for the holidays from 
her sophomore year at Vassar. 

''What mischief have you been doing here, Tom?" 
asked Uncle Billy when at length he had untangled 




Margaret began to weep silently, while Jack kicked 
the piano-chair 



12 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

himself and the situation. **You ought not to have 
filled these children's heads with this notion of going 
with us on our trip next summer." 

"I didn't," said Uncle Tom; "on the contrary, I told 
them emphatically that they could not go." 

Margaret began to weep silently, while Jack kicked 
the piano-chair as if he wanted to hurt it. 

" It's no trip for children," Mother declared. ** Climb- 
ing mountains and riding mules close to precipices and 
sleeping out in forests — I cannot see how the subject 
ever even came up. The national parks may be very 
well for hardy young men in their senior vacations, 
but they are no places for children — or for women, 
either." 

"Oh, aren't they though?" cried Uncle Billy. 
"That's just where you are good and mistaken. Sister 
mine. They are exactly the places for women and 
children — and old folks and everybody else. There 
are good hotels and good comfortable camps, good 
automobile roads and splendid safe trails. Thousands 
of people visit them every summer — more women and 
children than men by a good many. There are usually 
good doctors to be found, but people are so well in 
the mountains that they seldom need doctors. It is 
healthier even than home. No, as a matter of fact. 




The General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National 
Park. The biggest and the oldest living thing 



14 THE TOP OF THE ( OXTIXEXT 

the national parks are the finest places in the world to 
take children." 

"But I wouldn't trust the children to you harum- 
scarum young men," said Mother decidedly, "so let 
there be an end to this talk. Besides, I couldn't live 
a summer without them." 

"And I wouldn't go without Mother," said 2vlar- 
garet plaintively, snuggling close to her Mother's side. 

"Xot even with me?" asked Uncle Billy teasingly. 

Margaret slowly but decidedly shook her head. 
Then her face brightened and she began to jump up 
and dovra excited!}^. 

"But Mother shall go with us if it's so nice and 
comfy up there I" she cried. "Of course Mother shall 
go with us 1 She'll go I Oh, won't we go. Mother? 
We'll go to the top of the continent !" 

Uncle Billy stole a quick glance at pretty Aunt Jane, 
who flushed ever so slight h^ and looked down. 

"WTiy can't we all go?" he asked. "The whole 
blooming family?" 

Then there was pandemonium. 

And that is how the Jefferson family came to make 
a tour of the national parks the following summer. 

Father was doubtful about it at first, but he wrote to 
the Department of the Interior, at Washington, and 



HOW IT HAPPENED 15 

found out all about the national parks; he decided 
finally that the trip would be beneficial to all. 

"Besides the health and the fun," he said to Mother, 
"I think the children will learn something about the 
making of the earth. I was talking the other day to 
Professor Grimwood. He believes the trip will teach 
them unconsciously a good deal of fundamental fact 
about botany and geology, besides developing their 
love of the beautiful. And it cannot help making them 
patriotic to see the most magnificent parts of the great- 
est countr}' in the world." 

Much to the children's grief, Father could not spare 
the time from business to go along. 

"But I can get a couple of weeks or so in late Au- 
gust, perhaps," he said, "and I'll run out and get you 
and maybe see the Grand Canyon before we come 
home." 

Little else was talked about during the spring, and 
many were the books that Mother read about the 
wonderful national parks. It was determined that 
they should begin with the Rocky Mountain National 
Park, in Colorado, as that was the nearest to their 
Philadelphia home. 



II 

THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 

HOW THE GLACIERS HELPED MAKE THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN 
NATIONAL PARK 

THE Front Range of the Rocky Mountains was a 
delightful revelation to the women and the chil- 
dren of the Jefferson family, none of whom had seen 
mountains higher than the Catskills and the Adiron- 
dacks. Emerging, in an automobile stage, from a long 
and magnificent gorge through the foot-hills, they 
found themselves in a spacious rolling valley across 
whose farther horizon stretched a line of bold, pur- 
plish-gray, snow-topped mountains. 

The valley was gloriously green. It was dotted 
with open meadows and forest patches. Graceful hills 
and fantastic rocky cliffs surrounded its nearer sides. 
Back of all, miles away, rising apparently perpendic- 
ularly from the luxuriant forest, stretched a grim 
background of high, snow-spattered mountains. 

"Oh ! Oh ! Oh !" called Margaret in awed tones. 

Jack stood up, shouting in his excitement. Mrs. 
Jefferson drew a long, quick breath; neither she nor 
Aunt Jane spoke. The young men were keenly in- 

16 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 



17 



terested and asked many questions of the driver. 
After a while, as they drew rapidly into the valley, 
the mountains looming higher and revealing them- 
selves in full, Uncle Billy explained. 





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Photograph by Wiswall Brothers 



Sundown at Grand Lake- 



"These are not at all like the mountains in Glacier 
National Park," he said. "You cannot imagine any- 
thing more different. These mountains loom more. 
They seem more jagged. They mass heavier. At the 



18 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

same time they are colored differently. They seem 
daintier somehow. They do not seem real to me." 

**They are like a dream," said Aunt Jane quickly. 

''It's more than that," cried Margaret. "It is like 
Fairyland." 

'* Same thing," said practical Jack. ** Neither dreams 
nor fairies are real. But those mountains are real, all 
right. Oh, see that big bunch of them over on the 
left. Gee! I must climb to the tippy top of the biggest 
of them." 

"The driver says that is the Longs Peak group," 
said Uncle Billy. "Longs Peak is the highest moun- 
tain of them all. It is 14,255 feet high. It can be 
climbed, but it is a long, hard day's work." 

They swung past groups of small summer homes. 
A large showy hotel appeared on the right. Men and 
women were playing golf. Automobiles were fre- 
quently met. Many persons, singly and in parties, 
rode by on horseback. 

"Almost everybody wears khaki suits just like 
mine," said Jack proudly. 

"And oh," exclaimed Margaret, "there are ladies 
on horseback dressed just like men ! They haven't any 
skirts at all. I don't think that is nice, do you, 
Aunt Jane?" 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 19 

Aunt Jane flushed and said nothing. 

"That's a good joke on you, Jane," laughed Mrs. 
Jefferson. 

"Wliat is a good joke on Aunt Jane?" demanded 
both children at once. 

"Aunt Jane has no skirt to her new mountain riding- 
suit either," said Mother. 

"Oh, Aunt Jane!" cried Margaret, shocked. 

"You'll have to get used to that in the mountains," 
said Uncle Billy gayly. **Up here the ladies dress 
sensibly. Not only on horseback, but tramping on the 
trails, many women wear either very short skirts or 
no skirts at all." 

"Circumstances alter cases, Margaret," explained 
Mother gently. "It is just as foolish for women to 
wear long skirts for mountain-climbing as it would be 
for bathing at Atlantic City." 

They entered a straggling village of one street. Two- 
story shops, small frame hotels, and transportation 
offices lined both sides. 

"What a funny little town!" said Margaret. 

"This is the village of Estes Park," said Uncle 
Billy. "Here is where we change to our hotel bus. 
The hotels lie out in all directions for several 
miles." r 



20 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Why, I thought we were in the Rocky Mountain 
National Park," said Margaret, disappointed. 

"The boundary-Hne of the Rocky Mountain National 
Park lies just beyond the village," said Uncle Billy. 
"Most of the people stay down in this lovely valley 
and take trips into the mountains. There are hotels 
up there,. too." 

After lunch and another automobile ride, the Jef- 
fersons were duly installed in a straggling rustic hotel. 
They occupied rooms in one of many log houses clus- 
tered around the main house, where they had their 
meals and sat evenings around the great open fire- 
place. They had all the comforts and most of the 
luxuries of the resort hotels in the East; but here, in 
these apparently rude surroundings, they enjoyed also 
a sense of sympathy with the wild mountains which 
rose directly behind them. 

"See those funny little squirrels!" cried Margaret 
as soon as they were settled. "Oh, look at that one! 
He isn't a bit afraid. Oh, goodness, he's coming right 
at me." 

Jack shouted with glee. 

"Just like a girl!" he exclaimed. "It's you that's 
afraid, not he. Besides, they are not squirrels; they're 
chipmunks. They're awfully tame. I'm going to 
throw that one a peanut." 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS ^21 

But even Jack was startled a minute later when one 
of the chipmunks scampered up on his lap and took a 
nut from his hand. 

"Who's 'fraid now?" cried Margaret. 

For a long while both children forgot the mountains 
in their interest in the chipmunks. Jack even per- 
suaded one to climb to his shoulder and then to his 
head to receive a peanut. 

''Aren't they greedy?" exclaimed Margaret. **I 
don't see how they can eat so many nuts." 

"But they don't eat them," explained Mrs. Jeffer- 
son, who had been asking questions. "See, they poke 
them into pockets in their cheeks and every now and 
then run to their homes under ground and store them 
away for winter." 

"Just like ants," said Margaret. 

Their visit to the Rocky Mountain National Park 
was full of the most delightful surprises. The first was 
the effect of altitude, for the valley where most of the 
hotels are situated lies from seven to nine thousand feet 
above sea-level. The children found that running put 
them out of breath quickly and that the only way 
they could climb the still higher mountains was to 
move quite slowly and rest frequently. They were 
much puzzled at first. 

"The air is thickest at sea-level," Uncle Tom ex- 



22 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

plained, "and the higher you go up, the thinner it 
gets, until finally there isn't any air at all. So up here, 
where we live a mile and a half higher than we do at 
home, we draw less air into our lungs with each breath. 
Now, running and climbing uses up more air than 
sitting still, so we begin to pant more quickly here than 
at home. When you climb up those mountains you 
will find the air still thinner. You will have to move 
more slowly yet. But it won't hurt you to do that." 

Climbing the mountain-trails on horseback was an- 
other pleasant surprise. Even the ladies found that 
they could ride the steep and rocky trails for hours a 
day without special weariness. 

"Don't drive your horse," said the guide. "Hold 
the reins loosely, but let him take his own course and 
pick his way to suit himself. A mountain-trained 
horse has only two desires in life: one of these is to 
follow the horse ahead, the other is to get home for 
dinner. I will ride ahead and keep the trail; the other 
horses will follow if you will only let them alone." 

"But suppose he gets dizzy and falls off the rocks," 
said Margaret nervously. "I would rather get off and 
walk." 

"He won't." said Uncle Billy. "A horse has no 
imagination. He cares for nothing but the trail, and 



24 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

he fears nothing. If you were to walk around some of 
these steep places, you would become afraid and that 
would be the surest way to fall off and bump your head. 
That is because you have imagination. Leave it to 
the horse and you'll be all right." 

The ladies, who had feared that the trails would skirt 
the edges of great precipices, were pleasantly surprised 
to find that, even when they crossed the Continental 
Divide over Flattop Mountain, more than twelve 
thousand feet above sea-level, the trail lay alwa3^s a 
safe distance back from dangerous edges. 

They lunched on Flattop Mountain. 

** Uncle Billy," said Jack in an awed voice, ''isn't 
this the top of the continent?" 

"It is pretty near it, Jack," said Uncle Billy. "You 
will not find many spots in this world wilder than this, 
I imagine. These rocks back of us look like pebbles 
when compared with those enormous granite cliffs over 
there, but they are fully as big as big churches, never- 
theless." 

"That one must be as big as the Philadelphia City 
Hall," said Jack. 

"I think you are right. Perhaps it is even bigger. 
But how little it seems when you compare it with the 
top of Hallett Peak, just across that chasm. Now, 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 



25 




Uncle Billy washed Aunt Jane's face with a handful of snow 



that chasm, Jack, must be two thousand feet deep- 
nearly half a mile." 

"And that big snow-bank; doesn't it ever melt? 
asked Jack. 



26 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"No," said Uncle Billy. "It is there always. In 
winter it is covered much deeper with fresh snow, and 
as warm weather comes along the fresh snow melts off. 
But that much lasts always. Let's snowball." 

The children were delighted with the thought of 
snowballing in June, and after lunch was eaten and the 
paper boxes that contained it were carefully burned the 
whole party found a couple of acres of snow in which 
they frolicked till even Jack was tired out. Uncle 
Billy washed Aunt Jane's face with a handful of snow 
and made her cheeks rosier than ever. Jack heaped 
snow upon Uncle Billy till only his head and hands 
emerged. Even Mother took a hearty part in the fun. 

"Why, see those hens," said Margaret on their way 
back to the horses. "There must be a farmhouse up 
here." 

"They're bantams," cried Jack, "but they look more 
like partridges or pigeons. They're just as tame — why, 
you can almost catch them." 

"They are not chickens," said the guide, laughing. 
"They are ptarmigan — wild birds that live only on 
the high mountains. In winter they turn perfectly 
white, just the color of the snow." 

"How funny!" cried Margaret. "Why?" 

"That is what is called protective coloring," ex- 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 27 

plained Uncle Tom. **When all these mountains be- 
come snow-covered, the eagles and mountain-lions could 
see the ptarmigan a mile away if they should remain 
their present dark color. So nature gives them white 
feathers in snow time. Then they are reasonably safe." 

Another day they followed the beautiful Fall River 
Road to the end of Trail Ridge, and from there walked 
to Iceberg Lake. The view was just as fine as that 
from Flattop Mountain, but altogether different. They 
followed a trail a couple of miles along a bare lofty 
ridge twelve thousand five hundred feet high. 

"Now," said the guide, **be careful. Take hold of 
my hands as we come to this precipice. It drops 
straight down nearly a thousand feet." 

It was a timid party that approached the edge of 
the great precipice. A vast gulf, seemingly carved out 
of the solid granite, lay at their feet. Beyond it, far 
below, lay a superb pine-covered valley, and beyond 
that were other high mountains. 

But the great gulf at their feet was what drew all 
eyes. It was semicircular in shape, and the cold gran- 
ite walls were almost perpendicular. Gradually, hold- 
ing hands, they advanced quite close to the edge and 
looked down into the depths. There they saw a lake 
of dark turquoise-blue on which floated large cakes of 



28 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

ice. Snow-banks touched the water in places at the 
edges. A stream ran out of the lower end and was lost 
in the splendid green valley. Two eagles circled in the 
depths below them. 

They looked silently for a long time. 

"It is like looking down a well," said Jack, "but I 
never saw a well so big as this. Uncle Tom, how did it 
come to be like this?" 

"Here," said Uncle Tom, "you can read the story of 
the glaciers. This vast bowl of solid granite is called 
a cirque. It was carved out by the glacier which once 
lay within it. Originally the cirque was nothing but a 
depression in a granite slope. Ice settled in the depres- 
sion and froze to its rocky sides. The weight of the 
snows lying upon this ice began to push it down-hill, 
and that motion made a glacier of it. When this 
glacier began to slip, it pulled away some of the rock to 
which its edges were frozen. That undermined the 
slope, and the rock above split off, fell, and left a per- 
pendicular cliff. Then the glacier froze fast to the bot- 
tom of the cliff and undermined some more rock. Of 
course the rock above it split off again and fell, and 
that made the cliff higher. In that way the glacier 
worked back into the granite. 

" But at the same time it was pulling away the rock 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 



29 



frozen to its bottom, and that made the cirque deeper. 
So in a few milHon years it turned a sHght hollow in a 
granite slope into this enormous well. 




A full-grown brown bear 

"All the rock which the glacier undermined and 
pulled away from the bottom, together with that which 
fell upon it from above, it carried away into that im- 
mense valley you see to the north, which is now called 
the Forest Canyon because of its beautiful forests. 
But then it was the bed of an enoiTQOus glacier of which 
this smaller glacier was a lesser tributary." 



30 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Not only the children but the ladies listened with 
intense interest. 

"But what is a glacier?" asked Margaret. 

"A river of ice," said Uncle Tom. "It begins in a 
cirque like this; just as a river of water begins in a 
spring or lake. This cirque is continually fed by the 
snows of winter; just as the spring or lake is fed by 
the rains. The glacier flows down through valleys; 
just as the river of water. It breaks into crevasses as 
it passes down the steep slants; just as the river of 
water breaks into ripples and rapids. It pours crash- 
ing over precipices in its course; just as the river of 
water pours over cliffs in waterfalls. Its surface rises 
and falls according to the snowfall of the winter before ; 
just as the river of water rises or falls according to the 
wetness or the dryness of the season. It sweeps up 
the rocks alongside its course and carries them down- 
stream; just as the river of water sweeps up logs and 
branches from its banks." 

"But there is one difference," said Aunt Jane, "the 
glacier does not run down to the sea and the river of 
water does." 

"But the coast glacier does," said Uncle Tom. "In 
Alaska and other very cold areas glaciers sometimes 
run all the way to the ocean, and enormous pieces 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 31 

break off and float away. That is where the icebergs 
come from. But in inland regions like this, the glacier 
keeps flowing down to warmer levels until it comes to 
a place where ice melts. Then it turns into a river of 
water, which eventually finds its way to the sea. The 
end of a glacier is called its snout. Many of our 
great rivers begin at the snouts of glaciers." 

"Oh !" said Margaret. "It's just like a fairy-story." 

Jack said nothing, but he examined Iceberg Lake 
and the great cirque with deep attention. 

Several days later as the party rode in automobiles 
in the valley near a village called Moraine Park, Jack 
asked : 

"What a strange hill that is ! It starts four or five 
miles back in the mountains and runs straight out into 
this big valley. Just look. Uncle Tom. It is the same 
height its whole length, and slopes off like a huge 
river-bank on both sides. Then it stops suddenly. 
Whatever made it like that ? " 

"That," said Uncle Tom, "is an extremely large 
moraine." 

"What's a moraine?" 

"Once," said Uncle Tom, "two huge converging 
glaciers flowed this way from the mountains, and 
joined just where that hill ends. Each followed a 



32 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

valley that a stream had previously made. Each 
deepened and rounded out its own valley and heaped 
upon the valley's sides great hills of broken rock and 
sand, most of which it had brought down from its 
mountain cirque. These hills of broken rock and sand 
are called moraines. You see them all through the 
Rocky Mountain National Park. They are really the 
banks of the great ice-rivers of the far distant 
past. 

"Now, this particular moraine is so big because it 
lies just at the point where two specially large glaciers, 
after flowing several miles almost side by side, united 
into one. Both glaciers, you see, helped to build it. 
When these glaciers filled the valleys with their ice 
current, this great moraine between them must have 
looked like a tongue of land, ending in a point where 
the glaciers joined together." 

During all the rest of their stay, the children kept a 
sharp lookout for moraines. The Rocky Mountain 
National Park has many moraines. The children found 
it great fun to trace the courses of these ancient ice- 
rivers from their cirques under the precipices of the 
enormous Rockies far down into the valleys. 

The Mills Moraine, which was built by a gigantic 
glacier which once flowed from Longs Peak, especially 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 



33 



interested them because of the big turn it makes around 
the base of Mount Meeker. 

"Why, the glacier that made the Mills Moraine 
must have been a mile thick," said Jack. 




Longs Peak (centre), Mount Meeker (left), and Mount Lady Washington 

"Hardly that," said Uncle Tom, "but it may have 
been nearly half a mile thick. See the moraine. It 
rises a thousand or more feet." 

"I want to see where it started," said Jack. 



34 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

And so came about their final adventure. 

Meantime, they had explored the beaver-ponds and 
had seen Rocky Mountain sheep grazing on the slopes 
Qf Specimen Mountain. They had climbed to the top 
of the Twin Sisters and had seen the Forest Ranger 
searching the horizon for distant fires. They had fished 
in Bear Lake and had visited the wonderful wild- 
flower gardens of Loch Vale. Longs Peak was reserved 
for the last. 

"I cannot allow you children to go to the summit," 
said Mrs. Jefferson. " It may not be dangerous for men, 
and I know that many women climb it; but there are 
limits to everything, and that is where I draw the 
line." 

Jack went into the woods to hide his disappoint- 
ment, but Margaret wept aloud. Later they both 
admitted that Mother was right. 

"Never mind, children," said Uncle Tom, "I will 
give up climbing to the summit. Instead, I will take 
you and Mother to see Chasm Lake, where that big 
glacier began that built up the Mills Moraine." 

So, when they all dismounted from their horses one 
fine June morning at a little cabin hotel high up on the 
shoulder of Longs Peak, Mrs. Jefferson, Uncle Tom, 
and the children started afoot for Chasm Lake, while 




Photograph by Wisivall Brothers 

The precipitous face of Longs Peak from a rock shoulder 13,000 feet in altitude 



36 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Uncle Billy and Aunt Jane joined an adventurous 
climbing party for the summit. 

They found Chasm Lake quite as wild and romantic 
as Iceberg Lake, but this time, instead of looking down 
from the top, they looked nearly straight up half a 
mile from the water's edge to the towering summit of 
Longs Peak. It was just as notable an experience, 
though perhaps not so startling. 

**You don't feel so shivery," Margaret put it. 

"In this vast well formed by Longs Peak on the 
west, Mount Lady Washington on the north, and 
Mount Meeker on the south," said Uncle Tom, ** orig- 
inated the mighty glacier that hollowed out that im- 
mense glacier-bed to the east of us and piled up the 
Mills Moraine. This is one of the finest cirques that 
I have seen anywhere." 

And indeed the spectacle was one of extreme gran- 
deur. The enormous granite mass of Longs Peak, ris- 
ing perpendicularly above them four times the height 
of the Washington Monument, looked from this point 
of view dark and forbidding. Its summit was lost in 
light, fleecy clouds. The Jeffersons had seen this 
mountain from the valley under many varying con- 
ditions, sometimes glistening white, sometimes so deli- 
cately blue that it seemed to merge into the sky itself, 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 37 

sometimes gloomy with storm-clouds, sometimes, at 
sunset, a rich glowing orange-red. But this was another 
and almost a terrifying aspect. 

As they watched, the clouds thickened rapidly and 
dropped down into the great gulf almost to the spot 
where they stood. Scattering flakes of snow fell around 
them. Margaret shivered as they turned away, and 
Mrs. Jefferson looked anxious. 

"I hope Billy and Jane will not meet a snow-storm 
on the summit," she said. 

"Very likely they will have a little snow up there," 
said Uncle Tom. "They tell me that when it rains in 
the valley, it often is snowing on the summit. Clouds 
catch and hold the peak several times every day, and 
often it is snowing a little up there while down in the 
valley we have brilliant sunshine. But they have a 
good guide with them; and they tell me there have 
been no bad accidents." 

"So they told me," said Mrs. Jefferson; but she 
looked worried until, an hour later, while descending 
the mountain, their horses brought them out again 
into almost a cloudless day. 

The sun had long disappeared behind the higher 
mountains when the summit party returned to the 
hotel. Mrs. Jefferson gave a great sigh of relief when 



38 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

she saw six or seven horses approaching from far down 
the road. Until then she had not reaHzed how much 
she had worried. 

Aunt Jane cantered ahead of the party and soon was 
kissing the children rapturously. 

**0h, how wonderful!" she exclaimed. "It was the 
greatest experience of my whole life. The climbing 
was harder work than I ever imagined, and it fright- 
ened one a little sometimes to climb around those 
steep places near the summit. But it was inexpressibly 
grand. And the view ! Oh, that view ! But wasn't 
it mean of Billy to leave us and come down first? 
What was the matter? Was the altitude too much 
for him?" 

** Billy! Isn't he with you? He— he — isn't here," 
faltered Mrs. Jefferson. 

"Oh!" cried Aunt Jane. "He must be here! We 
saw him start back ahead of us, and we didn't catch 
up with him — we did not see him again. He — he 
must be here !" 

Aunt Jane's face paled. She clasped her hands and 
ran back to the approaching guide. Mrs. Jefferson 
ran into the hotel to find Uncle Tom. 

It was true. Uncle Billy, after having successfully 
made the ascent with the rest, apparently started back 




FJiolograph by W. T. Parke 

Hallett Peak in July.' A typical Rocky Mountain Gorge 



40 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

ahead of the party. The day had been overcast. 
Snow was falling fast before they left. The guide saw 
his footprints for a few hundred yards, when they be- 
came confused with others. The guide shouted for 
him, and Aunt Jane expected every minute to over- 
take him, but she did not doubt that he had safely 
reached the hotel. 

The guide was plainly disturbed, but others of ex- 
perience pointed out that no person ever had been 
lost or injured during the ascent of Longs Peak. 
Nevertheless, the Jeffersons were greatly alarmed, and, 
when Uncle Billy did not return at eight o'clock, 
the guide was engaged to return over the trail and 
search for him. Uncle Tom insisted on accompany- 
ing him. 

There was little sleep that night for the grown-ups. 
Several volunteers walked a few miles up the trail with 
the guide and Uncle Tom. But it was morning before 
Uncle Tom returned, nearly exhausted. They had 
found no sign of Uncle Billy; the guide had gone on 
to the summit. 

Uncle Tom was exhausted; he was obliged to go to 
bed and sleep an hour or two, but several experienced 
mountain-climbers with another guide started up the 
trail after breakfast. Aunt Jane insisted on accom- 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 41 

panying them, but Mrs. Jefferson remained below with 
the children. 

And so it happened that, about noon, Aunt Jane, 
riding just ahead of the guide, met Uncle Billy limping 
on foot down the trail. He had been on the summit 
all night. It was not he whom they had seen start 
down ahead of them, but a member of another party. 
He had been peering over the edge of Longs Peak 
precipice into Chasm Lake at the time the party left, 
and, when he tried to follow, he could not find the 
trail. 

"I do not know why I became so confused," he said, 
"for I found the trail easily enough this morning. 
But yesterday I was looking for it on the wrong side. 
It was snowing so hard that your tracks were all cov- 
ered up. Then it seemed to get dark very suddenly. 
Then, while I was wandering around in the snow, 
chilled and stiff, night seemed to shut down all at once. 
So I gave it up and looked for a sheltered place among 
the rocks and crept in there. 

"Do you remember, Jane, how you shared your 
lunch with me? Well, fortunately, I had my own 
still in my pocket, and, when I had eaten that, I felt 
very sleepy. The cold was dreadful, but I felt warmer 
after a lot of snow drifted over me. I held my hat 



42 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

over my face, and I must have gone to sleep right away. 
I think I was a little dazed. 

"Anyway, when I woke up and began to struggle 
with the snow that lay on top of me, it was early 
morning. I climbed out. I think my ears are frozen, 
and I know one foot is, for I can hardly walk. I was 
awfully cold. But the minute I looked around, I 
recognized that big rock we saw as we came up. The 
night wind had blown away some of the new snow, 
and there was the trail. 

"I don't know how I ever got down through the 
Trough. I had to feel my way. For a long distance, 
over the slanting places, I went on my hands and 
knees and brushed the new snow away. I felt for the 
trail with my hands. When I saw the Keyhole, I 
knew I was saved, but I was almost gone then. That 
is what gave me heart. Otherwise, I think I should 
have perished right there." 

The guide helped Uncle Billy on his own horse and 
the party descended to the hotel, where, you may 
be sure, he received a very warm welcome. Uncle 
Billy was disabled for several days, and weeks passed 
before he lost a slight limp. 

When, a few days later, the Jeffersons left the Rocky 
Mountain National Park for the Mesa Verde, Longs 



THE FIRST DITCH-DIGGERS 



43 



Peak glowed in the soft morning sunshine. Its bald 
slopes were a soft, delicate blue; and its summit, 
tipped with silver, shone in a warm red light. It was 
a most innocent-looking mountain. 




Photograph by S. N. Leek 

A large beaver family has lived here for many generations 




Ill 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 



NO ONE KNOWS WHAT BECAME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS OF 
THE GREEN TABLE 

MAI A impatiently cut the threads of the little 
loom her brown, grim, silent father had made 
for her, and tore from it a small square of dull-red cloth 
which her busy fingers had loosely w^oven during the 
hot afternoon. It had been hard work. The thread 
had become sadly tangled a dozen times; the last 
time it had taken a full half -hour to straighten out. 

But the cloth w^as fairly well made. The color, 
chosen from her mother's choicest stock, was warm 
and pretty, and the pattern, in corn yellow, was pleas- 
ing. The pattern ran from side to side across the 

square and, to Maia and her people, meant running 

u 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 45 

water. It was Maia's favorite pattern because it 
suggested what she loved best, the streams that poured 
down the Mesa's sides in the spring. 

It was not spring now, but midsummer, and the 
streams had long since dried up and disappeared — 
all but the river miles away in the great canyon where 
Maia's patient brothers sometimes caught small fish 
which they dried in the sun for winter use. Even the 
river had shrunk to shallows now and the fish were 
few and hard to catch. 

It was very hot under the low pines on the Mesa's 
top, and the women and most of the children had 
long since retired to the cool shadows of the great 
community house hidden under the overhanging edge 
of the cliffs. Only Maia, absorbed in her weaving, 
had remained above under the big tree, moving her 
loom from time to time as the shadows moved. 

**0h Sun!" she had said devoutly once when the 
heat seemed unbearable, **0h, great and mighty Sun! 
Have mercy upon me !" 

For Maia and her people worshipped the sun, which 
to them was God, the source of life. 

Maia, her cloth square in hand, flitted across a 
sunny open to a straggling clump of low pine near 
by. Here she knelt and parted the dry grass, dis- 



46 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

closing a red pottery doll lying upon a mattress of 
woven grasses. It was a crude little doll with rudely 
modelled features and square shoulders, reminding 
one of the Egyptian mummy-cases in museums. Star- 
ing eyes were rudely painted upon its square flat 
face. Its legs and arms were unshaped. One foot 
was missing. But Maia's face was full of adoring ad- 
miration as she gazed long at it and then tenderly 
lifted it and pressed it to her. 

"Dolly, dear dolly," she whispered. "At last you 
shall have your new dress." 

The sun was nearing the horizon when Maia com- 
pleted the task of fitting and stitching the cloth square 
into the semblance of a dress for dolly. It was no such 
dress as clothes the doll of to-day, but it was pic- 
turesque and graceful. Maia gazed long and lovingly 
upon her doll. Then, with bounding heart, she started 
home. 

As she neared the edge of the deep canyon under 
whose precipitous cliff was concealed, in an immense 
cavity in the sheer wall of rock, the city of ambitious 
architecture which we now call Cliff Palace, an old 
man wrapped in a blue rug marked with strange figures 
stood before her. She stopped, trembled, and dropped 
to the ground. But her eyes were fixed on his. Slowly 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 47 

he lifted his long thin bare arm and pointed his finger 
at her. 

"Daughter of Mains, maker of arrows, have you 
done your daily penance to our god the sun?" 

Maia threw herself upon the ground and cried si- 
lently. 

"Oh!" he said. "I thought not. Long have I 
watched you, evil child. Alone, I think, of all the 
children of our community you are careless, flippant, 
and irreverent. You play when you should work. 
Your loud laughter descends even into the kiva when 
our priests meet in solemn ceremony. Yesterday, 
absorbed in your doll, you failed to bow your head 
to me, the High Priest of the Almighty Sun." 

"It was not my doll," said Maia tremblingly. "I 
was grinding the midday meal in mother's new mor- 
tar." 

"You were playing," declared the High Priest. 
"Yes, and even this morning, playing with a bird, you 
saw me not." 

"Its poor wing was broken," sobbed Maia. "I was 
trying to " 

"Silence!" said the High Priest. "What is a bird 
to the sun — except for sacrifice ! Look across the 
canyon." 



48 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Maia lifted frightened eyes to a structure of new 
masonry which was rising above the stunted pines. 

"Here, on this solemn spot, under the rays of the 
setting sun, within sight of that holy temple build- 
ing to its honor and glory, I say to you. Daughter of 
Mains, that you shall do sad penance for your levity. 
Daily for thirty risings and settings of the sun shall 
you, at midday, descend even to the depths of this 
canyon, cross it on your knees, climb the other side, 
and on your knees creep to the Holy Picture which is 
embedded in its wall ; and there shall you lie upon your 
face for the space of one hour, confessing your sins 
and begging for forgiveness and mercy." 

The priest vanished and presently Maia, forgetting 
even dolly in her distress, moved slowly to the great 
rock alongside of which the trail descended to the 
series of ladders by which the community house and 
the top of the Mesa were connected. 

But further adventure was in store for her on this 
eventful day. As she grasped firmly a small pine and 
lowered her foot to the first rung of the top ladder she 
glanced upward and saw a strange face peering at her 
over a low bush. 

Maia stopped and gazed, but the face was gone. 
For a moment she thought herself mistaken. But she 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 



49 




could not have 
been mistaken ; 
the face surely 
had been there. 
Maia remain- 
ed for some 
time, listening. 
Her heart beat 
wildly, for this 
was not the face 
of any of her 
own people, and 
strangers came 
rarely and for 
no peaceful pur- 
pose. It was not 

even the face of any of the peoples of 
the innumerable smaller communities 
that dotted for many miles the can- 
yon cliffs of the Green Tableland. It 
was a lighter-colored face with thick 
hooked nose and fierce eyes. It was 
daubed with streaks of brilliant paint, 
was surmounted by long eagle feathers, 
sure about the feathers. 



She glanced upward and saw 
a strange face peering at her 



Yes, and it 
She felt quite 



50 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Maia was sadly frightened and began to descend 
the ladder rapidly. Then she missed dolly. 

Now where was dolly ? Yes, she remembered. Maia 
paused. Directly below her the cliff fell abruptly a 
thousand feet, but she thought nothing of that. What 
would that strange, fierce man do to dolly if he found 
her? That was what made Maia tremble. 

It certainly was a trying question, but in the end 
the mother instinct triumphed. The little girl slowly 
ascended the ladder and crept silently up the trail. 
The sun had set, but the glory of painted clouds still 
dimly lighted the thin forest. She peered through the 
trees. No one was in sight. Then, in an agony of fear, 
she flitted silently to the spot where she had knelt be- 
fore the High Priest. She felt among the dried grasses. 

Ah ! Here was dolly. Maia pressed her to her 
breast. Then she swiftly ran back to the big rock. 
As she reached it a dim figure leaning over the trail 
drew back suddenly and vanished. Maia fell headlong 
in sudden terror. One hand, holding dolly, sprawled 
over the great precipice, now gaping black as mid- 
night. The other hand instinctively grasped and 
held a smooth round stick. There was a slight rus- 
tle in the bushes. 

How Maia found the trail she never knew. Moving 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 51 

by instinct rather than conscious memory, she passed 
it swiftly and began to descend the ladders. She had 
thrust dolly into a loose fold of her dress. Uncon- 
sciously she still held the stick in one hand. It impeded 
her descent, but she clung to it. 

Feeling her way down several ladders, she came to 
the first resting-place, a mere ledge foothold. Here 
she paused and here first noticed the stick. 

An arrow ! 

Yes, but what an arrow ! Maia had never seen any 
arrow like it before. It was longer than those her 
father made and differently modelled. The wood was 
different. She could scarcely see it in the darkness, 
but she felt sure that such feathers grew on no birds 
of that neighborhood. And the arrow-head ! That 
was shaped far differently from any her father had 
ever made. 

Maia was puzzled and frightened. Who was that 
strange man with painted face who had been peering 
down their trail? She had heard many stories of the 
savage enemies who had driven her forefathers centu- 
ries before to build their cities in the safe clefts of 
these mighty precipices. Could there be others with 
him? Could they mean to creep down the ladders 
under cover of night and capture their community? 



5^2 THE TOP OF THE ( OXTIXEXT 

Maia shivered at the thought. A sHght sound made 
her listen intently. Surely there was somebody above 
her. A minute later she distinctly heard the slight 
rattle of a ladder. Yes, some one was coming down. 

Then followed other sounds. More than one was 
coming. Yes, many were coming. 

Maia's instinct was to scream, but she stifled it. 
She would get home first, anyway, and alarm the com- 
munity. But another thought checked her. She would 
find the community scattered and unprepared. The 
women would be making ready the evening meal. 
The men would be down in the deep circular kivas at 
devotion or council. Before she could alarm them, 
before the men could emerge for defense, all would be 
over. Their enemies would have arrived. They would 
be waiting at each kiva door to strike down the men 
one by one as they ascended. 

What should she do ? Surely no little girl of ten sun 
cycles ever was confronted by such an emergency ! 

The stealthy noises grew louder. 

Then Maia had her inspiration. 

A few months before her father had told her that 
the ladders upon the rest ledges were not fastened to 
the rocks. They were cunningly set in movable 
stones so they could be taken away quickly in time of 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 53 

need. He had showed her how the key stone could be 
pushed aside, causing the ladder to drop into the can- 
yon, leaving a gap which none could climb who did not 
know the finger-holes and- foot-holes in the perpen- 
dicular rock. These strange enemies could not know 
these finger-holes and foot-holes, Maia reflected, and 
they could not see them in the dark. 

She felt the ladder in front of her. She felt the 
stones at its base. But which was the key stone ? Maia 
pushed and pulled one after another. Not one of them 
moved. Perhaps she was not strong enough to move 
the stone. 

She had tried them all but one when she felt the 
ladder in front of her move slightly. A foot must be 
feeling for its top rung. Maia in her terror could re- 
strain herself no longer. She sobbed aloud. 

There was a quick movement above and low whis- 
pered words. What could she do ? 

The last stone ! Would it never move ! 

Yes, it did, slowly. Maia screamed aloud as she 
bent all her strength to the task. Slowly the stone 
slipped from its place and disappeared into the black 
depths below. A few moments' silence and the echoes 
of its fall split the still night. 

And then as Maia shrunk back, her strength ex- 



54 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

pended, the ladder glided from its foundation and 
hurtled into space, and with it passed downward a 
dark, struggling figure. A scream came from below, 
followed by crashing echoes. 

Revived by sheer terror, Maia seized the arrow and 
felt her way swiftly down the remaining ladders. 
Near the bottom she was met by ascending men who 
bore her quickly down to the stately city where an ex- 
cited throng surrounded her. 

"The child of evil!" exclaimed the High Priest, ad- 
vancing with lifted hands. 

But Maia held up the arrow, and then they knew. 

And while the alarm-fires were blazing under the 
overhanging cliffs Maia's mother comforted Maia, and 
Maia comforted dolly, who, of course, must have been 
sadly frightened. 

"Is that a true story?" Margaret demanded. "You 
must say it is a true story. It's just got to be true. 
This must be the place right here where Maia com- 
forted dolly. I know it's true." 

"And right out there on that rock," said Jack, "is 
where they lit the alarm-fire — just where all those 
other people down the canyon could see it. Say, is it 
true?" 



56 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"I'ln not sure," said the story-teller, laughing, "but 
it might be true. I heard something like it, perhaps a 
tradition, several years ago when I first visited the Mesa 
Verde National Park, and when I heard you children 
ask so many interested questions about the mysterious 
people who used to live in this wonderful Cliff Palace 
six hundred or a thousand years ago, I could not help 
telling it to you. But I'm afraid I have added a good 
deal to it out of my own imagination. I'm not even 
sure that the Mancos children had dolls." 

"True or not," said Mrs. Jefferson, "you have made 
this spot very real to my children, and I thank you." 

The Jeffersons had found the Mesa Verde so different 
from the Rocky Mountain National Park that every 
day was filled with delightful surprises. There were 
no lofty mountains, no snow, no glaciers. Instead, 
they found a dry, fiat, warm country indented with 
picturesque canyons and carpeted with asters and thin 
forests of small, apparently stunted, pines. It was 
strangely and wonderfully beautiful. 

Once, as Uncle Tom told them, it was a flat plain, 
but the melting snows and heavy rains of centuries 
of springtimes had washed most of the loose soil away 
until there were left only occasional elevations a thou- 
sand or two feet in height. 



THE MYSTERY OF THE MESA 57 

These elevations are called mesas, which is Spanish 
for tables, because they are flat on top. Most of them 
are quite arid, but the mesa which is the national park 




Photograph by George L. Beam 

Lookout Mountain, highest point in Mesa Verde 
The level of the country was once the level of the top of Lookout Mountain. The canyons and the 
plains beyond were washed away by thousands of years of spring floods 

is called the Mesa Verde because it has forests on it, 
Verde is Spanish for green. 

The canyons or valleys which the rains have washed 
in the sides of the Mesa Verde became the homes of 



58 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Pueblo Indians many hundreds of years ago. They 
built these homes high up in cavities in the cliffs, hard 
to reach either from above or below. That is why 
they were called Cliff Dwellers. There are many cliff 
dwellings in the southwestern part of the United States, 
but none so highly developed as those in the Mesa 
Verde. That is why it was made a national park. 

"But, Uncle Tom," said Jack after a minute ex- 
amination of the wonderful community dwelling known 
as Cliff Palace, "where did these people go ? Why did 
they leave this nice home?" 

"No one knows, Jack," said Uncle Tom. "They 
may have lived here for hundreds of years. They 
knew how to build well, as you see. They made good 
pottery and decorated their pots and plates with beau- 
tiful designs in rare colors. They fished in the river 
and raised corn on the mesas, which they cleared and 
irrigated. They hunted deer and other game. They 
became much more civilized than the Indians who 
lived in the east or, in fact, in any other part of the 
United States. Then, about six hundred years ago, 
they just disappeared." 

"Suddenly?" asked Jack. 

"No one knows that, either," said Uncle Tom. 
"But probably so, because the last great building they 




Photograph by George L. Beam 

Cliff Palace from across the canyon 

Showing the overhanging cliff which protected the community from attack from above 



60 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

put up was left unfinished. That building was Sun 
Temple. We shall see that to-morrow." 

** Maybe," said Margaret, "those painted men who 
scared poor Maia and her dolly killed them." 

"Perhaps," said Uncle Tom. "It is one of the 
theories about their disappearance that they were at- 
tacked by Indians from the plains and either destroyed 
or driven away." 

"Oh, I hope," said Margaret, "that it wasn't while 
Maia was still alive." 

"It is all a great mystery," said Uncle Tom. 

After exploring Spruce Tree House, Balcony House, 
and several other ruins, the Jeffersons visited Sun 
Temple, just across a deep canyon from Cliff Palace. 
This great temple was never finished. They all were 
especially interested in a fossil palm-leaf, in a rock em- 
bedded in the foundations. 

"Many thousands of years ago," said Uncle Tom, 
"all this southwest country was very hot, and large 
palms grew in the swamps." 

"How do you know?" demanded Tom. 

"Because some of the leaves were pressed in the 
mud. The mud turned into stone, and we find stones 
with the impress of the palm-leaves. That is one 
there. Now, the scientific men who study these ruins 



62 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

suspect that the people who built this temple thought 
that that fossil palm-leaf was a picture of the sun. So 
they probably worshipped this fossil." 

"Oh, it must be the Holy Picture !" cried Margaret, 
clapping her hands. 

"Yes," said Uncle Tom, "I think it m^ust be the 
Holy Picture." 

"And right here where we stand must be where the 
High Priest wanted to make Maia lie on her face an 
hour every day." 

"Probably right here," said Uncle Tom, smiling. 

"Oh!" said Margaret. "I do wish we could find 
dolly." 



• >f 








iji^Tjii:^ >-;.»»%«&«&-; 'S^ 



Photograph by Haynes, St. Faitl 

One of the Yellowstone bison herds 



IV 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 



ELK, DEER, ANTELOPE, BEAR, AND BISON LIVE NATURAL LIVES 
IN THE YELLOWSTONE 

SEE that streak of bright pink!" cried Margaret. 
**0h ! those beautiful pearly grays !" exclaimed 
Aunt Jane rapturously. "See how they change to 
darker streaks until they gradually merge into this 
jet-black sand right below us." 

"Yes," said Mrs. Jefferson, "and over there is deep 
cream fading into the most brilliant white you ever 
saw." 

63 



64 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Gee!" Jack exclaimed. ''That's a regular Prince- 
ton orange. Right there ! See ? And here's this black 
below us — orange and black, Princeton colors." 

"And crimson for Harvard," said Uncle Billy. 
"Don't forget Harvard. And there's a gorgeous Am- 
herst purple, too. It's a regular intercollegiate meet, 
isn't it? Only I don't see any Yale blue. How's 
that?" 

" Vassar wins !" cried Aunt Jane, clapping her hands. 
"Pink and gray are everywhere !" 

"And yellow, yellow, yellow — more yellow than 
anything else !" cried Jack. "That's my school color. 
Lots of schools have yellow." 

"And mauve," said Mrs. Jefferson. "What college 
has mauve? But surely there are no schools or uni- 
versities in the United States that cannot find their 
colors in this wonderful canyon's walls. Even green, 
Dartmouth's color; do you see? Such a glowing bril- 
liant green down on those far slopes. What is it? 
That green isn't colored rock and sand like the 
rest." 

"No," said Uncle Tom, "that is vegetation. It is 
manzanita, surely — yes, and scrub-pine. Look at it 
through the glasses." 

"And while you are talking of green," said Mar- 




Photograph by Gijford 

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Great Fall 



66 THE TOP Oi^ l^li^.CONTINENT 

garet, "do not miss that green and white river down 
there." 

"That river," said Uncle Tom, "is a thousand feet 
below where we stand. It is very deep and swift. 
The Great Fall up-stream there is twice as high as 
Niagara Falls." 

"Goodness!" cried Margaret. "It doesn't seem 
so high." 

"It is because it is two miles away," said Uncle 
Tom. "Then, too, this Grand Canyon of the Yellow- 
stone is so vast that even the biggest things seem small. 
Of course, it is not nearly so big as the Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado River, in Arizona; nevertheless there 
is no canyon in the world that equals this one for the 
immense variety and delicacy of its colors." 

"I understand why they call it the Yellowstone, all 
right," said Jack. "It's mostly all yellow." 

" Moran's big painting in the Capitol at Washington 
shows it practically all yellow," said Uncle Tom. 
"And so it is when you look at it as a whole. It is 
only when we look right down into it that we can see 
the thousand other shades and tints of the rock and 
sand." 

"I don't wonder they call this spot Inspiration 
Point," said Aunt Jane. 




Copyright by llaynes, St. Paul 



Upper Fall of the Yellowstone 



68 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"There's your Yale blue," cried Jack suddenly. 

** Where ? Where ? " they all asked, gazing downward 
into the depths. 

"Look up," said Jack. 

They all looked up at the azure canopy of sky cov- 
ering the whole gorgeous spectacle. 

"That completes it," said Mrs. Jefferson after a 
silence. "There seems now to be no color or shade 
of color missing. My brain is fairly gorged with 
color." 

"Just like another part of you feels after Thanks- 
giving dinner," said Jack, and Margaret squealed ap- 
preciatively. 

This was their first day in the Yellowstone National 
Park. They had come in through the eastern entrance 
and had seen the wonderful Shoshone Dam and beau- 
tiful Sylvan Pass on the way. They had stayed over 
night at a large hotel and had spent the morning look- 
ing at the surging Yellowstone River and the Upper 
Fall. Then, after luncheon, they had walked down to 
Inspiration Point to revel till sunset in the magnifi- 
cence of the painted canyon. 

As they walked slowly home a young man passed 
them bending under a large, partly filled sack. He 
carried a fishing-rod in his hand. 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 69 

"He's making believe that his potatoes are trout," 
said Jack jeeringly. They all laughed. 

"Let's have some fun with him," said Uncle Billy 
with a wink. "Say, my friend, you've had good luck, 
haven't you?" 

"Only fair," said the man, dropping his sack and 
wiping his forehead wearily. "It was stiffish work 
lugging these fish up from the river. I climbed too 
fast and I'm nearly all in." 

"Do you mean to state that your sack is full of trout ? " 
demanded Uncle Billy sharply. "Let's see them." 

"They ain't so many," said the angler apologeti- 
cally, "only nine, but they're fairish size." 

He emptied his sack on the grass. Sure enough it 
contained nothing but trout. 

"Gosh !" said Jack, and the two uncles knelt on the 
grass and examined the fish. 

"Not much like the trout we caught in the Adiron- 
dacks last summer, Jack," said Uncle Billy. "The 
smallest of these must weigh a couple of pounds." 

"No," said the angler, "that little feller doesn't 
weight more'n a pound and a half. You see he's slim. 
All these Yellowstone River trout are slim. But 
these others run two and a half or three pound each, 
and that big feller weighs five pound easy." 



70 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"And did you catch these huge things with that 
tiny rod?" demanded Margaret. 

"That's where the fun comes," said the man, grin- 
ning. "I got 'em down in that frothy water. I 
thought I never would land that big feller. I followed 
him more'n half a mile down-stream and onct I got 
into the water near up to my elbows. I thought I was 
a goner for a minute or two, for the water was fast 
right there. But I held onto a rock and held the fish, 
too, till somehow I got back ashore. That's where the 

fun comes in, little girl. It ain't the fish; it's the gettin' 

> >> 
em. 

"I'd rather catch sunfish," said Margaret with a 
shiver; but Jack's eyes shone with excitement and the 
two uncles exchanged meaning glances. 

The next day, after a steamer ride on Yellowstone 
Lake and a near-by glimpse of several white pelicans, 
one of which, standing on the shore, appeared quite 
as tall as Margaret, they visited the geysers. The 
children were silent with astonishment at the vast 
quantities of hot water which Old Faithful spouted 
nearly two hundred feet into the air. 

"But what makes it spout?" Margaret finally 
asked. "Is it a big fire-engine?" 

They all laughed, and Jack jeered loudly. 




Photograph by Haynes, St. Paid 

The Old Faithful geyser spouts every seventy minutes 



72 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Well, Jack," said Mrs. Jefferson, "you seem to 
think that very funny. Suppose, then, you tell Mar- 
garet what makes Old Faithful spout?" 

"Why," said Jack, as the whole party turned smil- 
ingly for his explanation, "why — why — it just spouts, 
don't you see?" 

And Jack grew red and uncomfortable as all laughed 
heartily. 

"Smarty!" cried Margaret triumphantly. She ca- 
pered around him, pointing her finger tauntingly. 

Uncle Tom checked Jack's sharp retort. 

"Children," he said, "I don't think that any of 
you, even wise Mother, can answer that question. I 
looked it up in the encyclopaedia before I left home, 
or I shouldn't have known, myself. Listen, and I'll 
try to tell you." 

They all gathered around. 

"Thousands of feet deep in the earth below us," said 
Uncle Tom slowly, "perhaps very many thousands of 
feet, the rocks are excessively hot, so hot that they in- 
stantly make water boil. Down among these hot 
rocks, right under Old Faithful, there is a cave, perhaps 
as big as a very large room, and from the top of that 
cave a vent or long hole, perhaps three or four feet in 
diameter, leads all the way up through the earth into 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 73 

Old Faithful. It is out of the upper end of that long 
hole that the water spouts. 

"Now, there are springs far down in the earth that 
empty their cold water into that hot cave. As fast as 
the water pours into the cave, it boils up and fills the 
long vent-hole above with heated water. 

"Now stop and get that into your heads. 

"But new spring- water is pouring into the cave all 
the time and this water turns rapidly into steam. 
Now, you know that when steam is compressed, as in 
the cylinder of a locomotive, it acquires tremendous 
force. So this steam in the hot cave, which is pressed 
down by the weight of the water in the vent-hole 
above, and pressed up all the time by the new steam 
from the heated rocks below, finally cannot stand the 
pressure any longer and just hurls that heavy weight 
of water overhead right up and out. That is what 
makes the geyser spout." 

"It's like on a warm night I just can't stand the 
bedclothes any longer and kick them on the floor," 
said Jack intelligently. 

"Something like that," said Uncle Tom. "Mar- 
garet, do you understand it now?" 

Margaret shook her head. 

"Listen, Margaret," said Aunt Jane. "Haven't you 



74 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

seen the steam in the kettle on the gas-stove at home 
get so hot that suddenly it blows the lid off?" 

Margaret nodded, her eyes brightening. 

"Well, a geyser is just like that," said Aunt Jane. 
"The hot rocks are like the gas-stove; the cave is like 
the kettle; and the water in the vent-hole is like the 
lid." 

"Oh, I see! I see!" cried Margaret, dancing. "A 
geyser is just a kind of a big teakettle — but I'll bet 
that Jack doesn't understand it yet." 

Jack glanced at her contemptuously. 

"A boy always understands more than a girl," he 
said. "I understood it long before you did." 

And Uncle Tom had to intervene again by pointing 
out other geysers spouting in the distance. 

"There are several hundred geysers here in the Yel- 
lowstone," he said. "Some of them are very large and 
only spout at intervals of weeks or months. Old Faith- 
ful here spouts every seventy minutes. Some of the 
little ones spout every few minutes. The mud- vol- 
cano you saw this morning is nothing more than a small 
geyser whose vent is filled with soft watery mud in- 
stead of water." 

But, after all was said and seen, the most popular 
feature with the children was the Yellowstone's wealth 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 75 




Photograph by Schlechten, Bozeman 



Blacktail fawn 



of wild animal life. They counted more than eighty 
deer on their third day, which they spent riding horses 
over the trails in the northwestern part of the park. 
Then they lost count. 

"They're just as tame as sheep," said Margaret, as 



76 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

a large buck and two does lifted their heads above a 
mass of low bushes scarcely a hundred yards from the 
trail. The deer watched them pass and resumed 
their grazing. 

"One of the rangers told me," said Mrs. Jefferson, 
"that in the autumn, after most of the tourists go, the 
deer flock to the hotels to feed on the lawns. Some of 
them walk up the porch steps and take grass and 
flowers from your hand. They have no fear at all." 

"A man in the hotel," said Uncle Billy, "told me 
last night that he was one of a large supper-party in a 
bungalow in the northern part of the park when a 
doe came in through the open door and walked entirely 
round the table." 

"Why are they so tame here?" asked Margaret. 
"You told me yourself, Uncle Billy, that when you 
went hunting in the Adirondacks you could hardly 
get near enough to a deer to shoot." 

"That," put in Uncle Tom, "is because no shooting 
is permitted in any of the national parks. The Yel- 
lowstone was made a national park in 1872, and in 1894 
a law was made prohibiting all shooting. Since then 
many kinds of wild animals have increased greatly in 
number, and have lost nearly all their fear; people do 
not hurt them here and so the animals have become 
quite neighborly." 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 77 

"But I want to shoot them," said Jack. "I want to 
shoot a bear." 

"You'd be afraid," said Margaret. 

"I wouldn't," said Jack. "I'd go right up to a bear 
just as quickly as I'd go up to any — oh !" 

Jack, who was riding ahead, stopped suddenly. 
Then he drew a sharp wavering breath and turned his 
horse. 

"Run," he whispered hoarsely. "Run! Quick! 
Quick ! Here, let me pass !" 

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Jefferson ner- 
vously. 

"Leggo my horse!" shouted Jack to Uncle Billy, 
who had grasped his reins as he tried to push past. 
"Here you, stop that. I want to get away. Don't 
you see them? Hurry! hurry! Oh, quick!" 

The party drew rein and looked into the woods just 
ahead. Under the trees several hundred yards away 
sat a large black bear and two cubs. 

"Oh, Mother, look at those cunning little bears," 
cried Margaret. "They're playing with something 
that moves in the grass. And look ! look ! See that 
one climb the tree. Oh, isn't that too cunning for 
anything?" 

The guide, who had been removing a pebble from 
his horse's foot, now rejoined them. 



78 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

**How near will it be safe to approach?" asked 
Uncle Billy. 

"It is safe enough," said the guide. "But you stay 
here and let me see how near I can get before they 
run away." 

He dismounted and, holding a lump of sugar be- 
tween his fingers, slowly moved toward the bears. 
Mother bear instantly became alert, watching his every 
movement with sharp, interested eyes. As he neared 
them the guide moved slower and slower. Presently 
he scarcely seemed to move. The cubs, absorbed in 
play, did not notice him, but their mother rose slowly 
and regarded him with deepest attention. He did not 
seem to look at her, though really he watched her 
closely. He approached the cubs and stood silent for 
some minutes. When he threw a lump of sugar to 
the cubs, mother bear rose swiftly upon all fours but, 
as he made no other movement, she remained still. 

But not the cubs. One of them saw the sugar, 
smelled it, licked it, and then ate it greedily. He tossed 
another lump and another. Each fell nearer to him, 
until the cubs were almost within reach. Mother 
bear watched intently. So did the Jeffersons back on 
the trail. 

Ten minutes later the cubs were standing erect. 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 79 

eating sugar from the guide's hand, and mother bear, 
now satisfied that no harm was meant, was again 
quietly seated. 

"Let me go feed the baby bears," said Margaret. 




Photograph by S. N. Leek 

There are thirty thousand elk in the Yellowstone 

**No," said Mrs. Jefferson sharply. "You will stay 
right here." 

Jack asked no permission. He slipped from his 
horse and started for the guide, but Uncle Tom's firm 
hand grasped his arm. 

"None of that," he said sternly. "Get on your 
horse." 



80 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"It's best not to fool with bears," said the guide on 
his return. ''Some tourists feed them, but they 
oughtn't to. They don't know bears. It's different 
with us. We know them." 

Moving slowly and quite silently over the trails 
they saw many wild animals that day. Dozens of 
sturdy elk loped silently away at their approach. A 
large moose entered the trail a couple of hundred yards 
in front of them and did not hurry when he saw them. 
On a not distant hillside they saw a band of antelope. 
There were smaller animals, too. They saw three 
foxes and a coyote. 

"In very heavy winters when food is scarce in the 
mountains because of the heavy snows," said the 
guide, "the park rangers scatter hay in the valleys. 
Thousands of deer and elk and hundreds of Rocky 
Mountain sheep come down to feed. They are es- 
pecially tame then. Many times I have actually 
touched the sheep, which are usually the most timid 
of all our animals." 

"All of which," said Uncle Tom, "merely proves 
that wild animals naturally are friendly. They fear 
men only when men are cruel and murderous." 

For several days Margaret thought and talked of 
little else besides the baby bears. Chipmunks ceased 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 81 

to interest her and even a young doe which her mother 
coaxed with a bunch of flowers nearly within reach 
failed to arouse her usual enthusiasm. Meantime they 



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Many families camp all summer 



had lived part of the time in the large luxurious hotels 
and part of the time in the public camps. Jack pre- 
ferred the camps. He liked to sleep in the tents, and 
the big fires which the camp managers built under the 
trees in the evenings fascinated him. Several days 



82 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

were spent on horseback on the trails. The two uncles 
fished with some success; once they took Jack but, as 
he caught no trout, he preferred afterward to stay with 
Margaret. They saw more of the geysers and the hot 
springs. Once they bathed in the hot-water swimming- 
pool during a hail-storm, which so battered their heads 
that they were glad to hurry out. 

One sleepy afternoon while the uncles were fishing 
and the ladies napping in a tent, Jack wandered down 
the road to talk with a park ranger. Margaret fin- 
ished her story-book and ran back in the woods for 
wild flowers. She lay down under a tree and fell 
asleep. 

Waking in the shadows of late afternoon, she sat 
up suddenly with the consciousness of stealthy noises 
near at hand. What they were she did not know, but 
she was frightened. At first she thought dogs were 
growling pla3^ully, but instantly she knew that no 
dog uttered the sounds she heard. 

Rising slowly and with beating heart she peered 
around a tree-trunk and gave a low cry of surprise, 
pleasure, and alarm, for only a few feet away two 
bear cubs were rolling over each other in play. 

Margaret was frightened at first. She did not dare 
run. She scarcely dared breathe. But there was no 



WILD ANIMALS OF GEYSERLAND 



83 



large bear in sight and after a while her pleasure in the 
play overcame all other feelings. 

"Oh, if I only had some sugar!" she whispered to 




Yellowstone hot-water formations beautifully colored by microscopic 
vegetable algae 

herself. "I wonder if I just couldn't touch that lit- 
tlest one just once." 

So she stole slowly toward them, just as she had 
seen the guide do a few days before. The cubs were 
wrestling quietly, both prone on the ground, and did 
not see or scent her. She got down on her knees and 



84 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

crept faster toward them, one hand outstretched and 
her heart beating in expectation. She felt very dar- 
ing, and so indeed she was, far more daring, in fact, 
than she could have known. The cubs played on un- 
suspectingly, each trying to bite the other's ear. 

Margaret's outstretched hand was within a few inches 
of the nearest cub when a dry stick snapped sharply 
under her knee. Then everything happened at once. 

Both cubs jumped up quickly and one rolled over 
fairly upon Margaret's head. She screamed and strug- 
gled to her feet. She saw both cubs scrambling madly 
up a tree. She also heard a short, sharp growl and the 
crash of breaking bushes. A great shaggy, brown head 
with staring eyes, hanging jaws, and glistening white 
teeth pushed swiftly into view not a hundred feet 
away. 

Margaret screamed wildly anid ran as she had never 
run before. She heard a snort behind her and fast 
padding footsteps. She miraculously escaped the 
trees as she ran. A few moments later she was sobbing 
in Uncle Billy's arms. 

Great excitement, of course, had followed the dis- 
covery of Margaret's disappearance. The camp was 
aroused and a score of searchers invaded the woods in 
all directions. Uncle Billy was searching the near-by 




/f 



Margaret screamed wildly and ran as she had never run before 

85 



86 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

woods when Margaret's scream drew him running to 
the spot. Uncle Billy saw the mother bear standing 
at a distance. She probably had followed Margaret only 
a few steps. After a few moments, assured of her 
cubs' safety, she returned slowly to them. 

It was a long time before the frightened little girl 
was comforted. According to her story the mother 
bear was as big as the elephant in the Philadelphia 
Zoo; it was noticeable that Jack did not offer to go 
back into the woods and shoot her. 

Around the camp-fire that night Margaret had to 
tell her story many times. She felt herself quite a 
heroine. When Mrs. Jefferson tucked her into her 
warm bed and gave her many good-night kisses, not 
unmingled with loving tears, Margaret said: 

"Well, Mother, an3rway, I've touched a really, truly 
live wild bear, haven't I?" 

"But Mother's little girl will never, never do any- 
thing like that again, will she? Promise Mother." 

"Yes, Mother, I " 

But Margaret was asleep. 




Mountain-sheep 

V 

THE EDUCATION OF ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 

NO OTHER SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE WORLD IS MORE BEAUTIFUL 
THAN THE GLACIER NATIONAL PARK 

WHERE? Where? I can t see any little white 
spot that moves." 
Margaret jumped up and down excitedly. "Where? 
Oh, tell me where to look. I micst see that little white 
spot that moves. Tell me ! Tell me where !" 

"I can't tell you now," said Uncle Tom, **for the 
spot has vanished. But I can tell you a story about 
another little white spot just like that one." 

"Oh, it's just too mean that I haven't seen one yet !" 

87 



88 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

cried Margaret. ''But look! Look! See where 
Uncle Billy and Mother and Auntie have got to !" 

"Gee," said Jack, "they're most up to the glacier. 
It was awful mean of them to leave us behind." 

"Not a bit of it," retorted Uncle Tom. "On Black- 
feet Glacier the other day you nearly fell into a cre- 
vasse. That was quite enough excitement for one 
summer. But sit down on this grass and listen to my 
story." 

The children sat down beside a glassy lake which 
reflected the broad stretch of blue-white ice upon a 
sloping shelf of rock hundreds of feet above its sur- 
face. Two snow-spattered mountains rose above it, 
one on either hand. 

"That's some glacier," said Jack admiringly. "Say, 
Uncle Tom, those rocks look awfully old, don't they ? 
They are gray and wrinkled and all cut up into seams 
and cracks just like that old Indian we saw at the 
station when we came in. They must be just terribly 
old." 

"Yes, Jack, they are," said Uncle Tom, "they are 
almost the oldest rock in the world. Do you know 
how the Glacier National Park was made?" 

"No, how?" asked the children together. 

"Well, you know already that many geologists be- 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 89 

lieve that the earth was once a vast globe of hot gas, 
and that it became soHd and much smaller as it cooled." 

"Yes, I know," said Margaret, looking very wise 
indeed. "Heat expands and cold contracts." 

"Other geologists," continued Uncle Tom, "believe 
that the earth never was gaseous, but a big globe of 
loose rock, the outside skin of which, as the ages passed, 
settled of its own weight into the hard, solid thing it 
is to-day. In either case the inside contracted and be- 
came too small, here and there, for the skin. Natu- 
rally the skin cracked — just as an orange-skin some- 
times does when you suck the juice out. Then one edge 
of the cracked part got squeezed up and pushed over 
the other edge. That happened right here in what is 
now Glacier National Park." 

"It must have scared the people who were spending 
the summer here," said big-eyed Margaret, greatly 
interested. 

"Oh, bless you, child," said Uncle Tom, "there were 
no people living an3rwhere in the world then. That 
was long before God made Adam and Eve. That was 
millions of years ago." 

'* Millions of years?" asked Margaret. 

"Yes, millions, many millions. Perhaps fifty, sixty, 
a hundred millions of years ago. No one knows. Any- 



90 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

way, after this edge was pushed over the other one, 
the rains and the frosts began to chisel and carve it. 

**How? I'll tell you. In the summer the water 
soaked down into all the tiny cracks and in the winter 
froze up tight. Now, when water turns into ice it 
expands just a trifle; so, when the rain-water froze in 
the cracks, the ice forced the cracks wider open. After 
a while flakes and chunks of rock loosened and broke 
off and the next summer's rains and freshets washed 
them away. Jack Frost is a wonderful sculptor. It 
is he who has carved these mountains with his millions 
of millions of tiny icy chisels. 

"At first this great overthrust edge stood up bare 
and shapeless. Probably it was many miles thick. 
But after Jack Frost had worked upon it for a few cen- 
turies, the top wore off. Jack Frost is a busy fellow. 
He never stops to play or sleep. He worked on this 
overthrust for centuries of centuries; for thousands of 
thousands of years; for many times thousands of 
thousands of years. And during this tremendous 
period, whose length no human mind can grasp, all of 
the enormous bulk of overthrust rock was chiselled 
out and washed away except the very bottom layer. 

"Now, this bottom layer was, of course, the very 
oldest of all the rock. It belongs to a period which 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 91 

geologists call the Algonkian. Once, before it was 
hoisted so far up in the air, it was the bottom of a sea. 
And that is why it looks so very old — simply because 
it really is the oldest rock there is." 




Pkolosraph /'v /■/(,/ //. A/.,, 

Wcbtcrii end ot r^i. Mary Luke 

Citadel Mountain in left centre is typical of the erosional mountain shapes everywhere common. 
Erosion has made a cone of Fusillade Mountain, on its right 

"Gee, but that's interesting!" said Jack. **Was 
there any life at all when that rock was made?" 

"Maybe there were just the beginnings of life," said 
Uncle Tom. "But there were no animals or trees. 



92 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Possibly there were tiny living vegetable growths; 
many geologists think so." 

"Uncle Tom," asked Jack, **why are there so many 
lakes in Glacier? And what makes the mountains 
such queer shapes? A lot of them make me think of 
that keel-boat of Uncle Billy's when he turned it up- 
side down for the winter." 

"First of all, Jack," Uncle Tom replied, "because 
the rock is principally sandstone and limestone, which 
are both softer than the granite in the Rocky Mountain 
National Park; and next because these rocks have 
been exposed to the frosts and the rains for so many 
millions of years. For these two reasons the glaciers 
have cut deeper cirques and valleys and have gouged 
out bigger precipices and more and larger lakes. For 
the same reasons the mountains have worn aw^ay into 
those strange shapes you speak of. The lakes and 
mountains of Glacier National Park are the most 
romantically beautiful in the world because they are 
the oldest in the world. Jack Frost has had softer ma- 
terial to work with and more time to spend upon his 
carving." 

"But aren't you going to tell us that story about 
the other little white spot?" asked Margaret. 

"Of course I am," said Uncle Tom, **The scene of 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 93 

the story is right here where we are sitting. Do you 
see that horizontal ledge up there on the side of 
Mount Grinnell ? How high up do you think that is ? " 

Neither of the children could tell. 

"Well, that is probably more than two thousand 
feet — say, half a mile — higher than this lake. If 
twenty steeples as high as our church-steeple at home 
were set one on top of the other it would not reach so 
high. You will notice that the rock from that ledge 
seems to drop straight down." 

"It does drop straight down," asserted Jack, "just 
as straight as a house." 

"Well," said Uncle Tom, "how would you like to 
have been born up on that ledge?" 

"Oh, goodness!" cried Margaret. "And be a little 
baby up there ? And creep out and fall off ? No, sir ! But 
nobody ever was born up there, Uncle Tom; really?" 

" Little Rocky was born in a cave back of that ledge," 
asserted Uncle Tom. "The ledge was his front yard; 
and it had no fence, either. Mrs. Rocky Mountain 
Goat, his mother, was a nice, timid, mild-eyed lady 
who wore long white furs all the time, summer as well 
as winter. His daddy, Mr. Goat, had a straight white 
beard and big staring eyes. He looked very like old 
Mr. O'Reilly who keeps the candy stand near your 



94 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

school, Jack. Only his face was as white as a clown's, 
and he dressed in white from head to foot. The long 
hair on his legs stopped a good deal short of his feet, 
just like Mr. O'Reilly's Sunday trousers. Mr. Goat 
had funny short horns sticking straight up out of his 
funny long head. I'm afraid he was a queer-looking 
person, but Mrs. Goat thought him very handsome; 
and, as for little Rocky, he thought Dad the most won- 
derful creature in all the world. 

** Now, when Rocky was big enough to go out upon 
the ledge where his parents cropped grass and wild 
flowers all day, his father led him to the edge and told 
him to look over. Rocky did so. A thousand feet 
below him enormous rocks — see them there ? — threat- 
ened him in case he should fall. But he was not afraid 
because he never thought of falling. His father and 
mother were not afraid ; so why should he fear ? 

"Later on his father led him out to the edge of 
still greater precipices and taught him to leap across 
chasms and jump up and down to other ledges. In 
these leaps. Rocky' s little body often would momen- 
tarily pass across chasms a quarter of a mile or more 
deep, but he had no more sense of danger than you 
children have in ascending some high office-building 
in an elevator. 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 95 

"Remember that fear is almost wholly a thing of 
the imagination. The same persons who are terrified 
by the sight of harmless snakes often have no fear 
whatever of germs which are exceedingly dangerous 
and deadly. Rocky was fearless because no one had 
ever suggested to him the possibility of his falling. 
And, because he had never feared falling, his chances 
of ever falling became very small. Fearlessness, cour- 
age — this is what enabled Rocky to leap across the 
dizziest gulf, and what will enable you children to do 
most of the things you want to do in life. 

''But Rocky's life was not all spent upon the ledges. 
Sometimes his parents took him down to those beauti- 
ful wild-flowered slopes by the glacier's side; but they 
did not do this often while he was still very small for 
fear of the lions." 

"Lions? Not really!" cried Margaret, and Jack 
looked up with sudden interest. 

"Yes, indeed," said Uncle Tom, "but not the kind 
of lions you have seen in the zoo. Those live only in 
hot countries. The American mountain-lion is a large 
and ferocious brute that does not fear the cold. In 
fact, his home is in the coldest regions in the United 
States. When the snow is many feet deep in the 
valleys and the thermometer is fifty or sixty degrees 



90 THE TOP OF thp: continent 

below zero, Mr. Lion goes out hunting for the goats 
and the deer that serve the same purpose for him that 
roast beef and broiled chops do for you. 

"Now, Mr. Goat was a powerful and fearless fel- 
low, and taught little Rocky many things about get- 
ting along in the world. He taught him where to find 
the salt-licks, for animals need salt just as much as 
you need it, but they do not need it so often. He 
taught him to go to the licks at times when he was 
least likely to find lions waiting under near-by bushes. 
He taught him how to jump down a precipice and 
alight on some small ledge with all four feet held to- 
gether, and from there leap to another ledge lower 
down. In fact, little Rocky' s sturdy father gave him 
the best possible education in the art of making a 
living and escaping his enemies in a land where living 
was difficult. 

"But Rocky learned many other useful things that 
his father could not teach him. Uncle Waggletoe, his 
father's older brother, was a very wise old goat. He 
had not been content to graze in one neighborhood 
like most goats. He had, indeed, travelled over all 
the neighboring mountains for many miles around. 
He had asked countless questions of the mountain- 
sheep and the eagles and the smaller animals and 




Uncle Waggletoe 
A lucky snapshot. Rocky Mountain goats seldom come within near-camera range 



98 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

birds whom he had met on his travels. He was, in- 
deed, a wise old goat." 

"Why did they call him Uncle Waggletoe?" asked 
Margaret. 

"For the same reason that we call you Margaret," 
said Uncle Tom, "because it was his name." 

Jack laughed and Margaret pouted. 

"The fact is," said Uncle Tom, 'that Uncle Wag- 
gletoe had a curious habit of shaking his left hind foot 
whenever anything interested him greatly. That is 
what gave him his name. You will hear presently 
how this habit served him a very good turn. 

"One day when Rocky was a vigorous youngster 
who could leap farther and butt harder than any other 
young bucks of his own age, Uncle Waggletoe and 
Daddy Goat had a long and earnest conversation on 
the top of a lofty precipice looking down upon Ice- 
berg Lake. At its close they trotted gravely for a 
quarter mile down a slanting ledge, leaped from there 
to the next lower and so on till they joined a group of 
several families gossiping idly in the sunshine near 
the water's edge. Mr. Goat called Rocky from a 
wrestling-bout with a visiting kid from Mount Wilbur 
and said solemnly: 

" 'Rocky, Uncle Waggletoe thinks you ought to 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 99 

travel. I never travelled, myself, and I always have 
been well, happy, and safe. On the other hand, he 
was a great traveller in his youth. He has seen the 
mountains of Canada and the plains of the Blackfeet. 
He has even drunk of the swift waters of the Flathead. 
He has had many adventures and several narrow es- 
capes. Perhaps travel has broadened and improved 
him. Many say so. Your Uncle Waggletoe is much 
respected. He has offered to show you the world, and 
I have consented. You see,' he added, lowering his 
voice, 'your Uncle Waggletoe's influence is undoubt- 
edly greater for his having travelled. People think he 
is a much more important goat than really he is. I 
don't much believe in travel myself, but certainly it 
is a cheap and easy way to make a reputation.' And 
Mr. Goat winked one eye solemnly. 

"From which you will perceive, children, that Uncle 
Waggletoe was not the only wise old goat in the Ice- 
berg Gorge that morning. 

"They started early one spring morning from Ice- 
berg Lake. More than a hundred white goats, young 
and old, great and small, gathered on the ledges to 
bid them farewell. 

" *In all Goatland, my dear Rocky,' said Uncle 
Waggletoe, 'you will see nothing grander than this 



100 



THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 




VMG-H^r^ ETMCrtT 



Spot. That glacier 
slanting sharply 
down the mountain- 
side and splitting 
off ice chunks into 
the water is not so 
large as many you 
will see, but it is 

- very, very wonder- 
ful. An eagle once 
told me that he had 

seen a place called 

Mount Raini er 
where the glaciers 
were hundreds of 
times as long as 
this and the ice as 
thick as the Garden 

• 'In all Goatland, my dear Rocky' ^^^ jg J^jj^^ g^^ 
said Uncle Waggletoe, you will ^ 

see nothing grander than this eaglcS are SUCll 
spot.'" 

liars ! ' Uncle Wag- 
gletoe sighed. 
^ "Now, I am not 

going to describe their travels, for that would take 
too long. They were away all summer, and they saw 
most of the magnificent mountain country which we 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 101 

call the Glacier National Park. They crossed the 
Continental Divide, not by the beautiful Swift current 
Pass which we shall cross to-morrow on horseback, 
but right up over the Garden Wall. They skirted 
the crests of giant heights and stood on the top of 
Mount Cleveland, the loftiest peak in the park, from 
which they looked upon one of the noblest mountain 
spectacles in the whole world. South of them the 
McDonald Valley, framed in ice-topped mountains, 
wound its magnificent course through distant passes 
to placid forest-bordered Lake McDonald. Thousands 
of feet below them lay the broad green Waterton 
Valley, dotted with lakes and backed by splendid 
glacier-shrouded heights. To the north lay the lesser 
Canadian Rockies. 

** 'I did not know the world could be so big,' gasped 
Rocky. 

'* 'Those strange men-creatures that walk on their 
hind legs and ride horses,' said Uncle Waggletoe, 
'seldom come up here. That is why I like it here. 
They are getting too plentiful at Lake McDermott 
and Iceberg Lake for my comfort. Of course they 
never kill us as they used to do. Your father thinks we 
are quite safe; but, frankly, I should feel safer if we all 
moved up here.' 

" * Did they ever kill us ? ' cried Rocky, aghast. 



10^2 THE TOP OP^ THE CONTINENT 

***Did they? Well, they did, indeed,' said Uncle 
Waggletoe. 'Many years ago when my father was a 
young buck like you, they used to point magic sticks 
at us that made noises like rocks dropping from prec- 
ipices. Every time that noise was heard a goat died. 
Then they would climb up and get his poor body. We 
never could understand why. Sometimes we would 
find blackened sticks where a fire had been burning 
and bones lying near it. Perhaps they ate goats; we 
never knew. It seemed strange that we never found 
goats' heads and skins. I think they must have eaten 
the heads and skins. But lions don't do that; we 
never could understand.' 

***But don't they point magic sticks at us any 
more?' asked Rocky nervously. 

" 'They have not done so for many years.' 

" 'Perhaps they have lost the sticks,' Rocky sug- 
gested. 

" 'No,' said Uncle Waggletoe, 'they still have them, 
and sometimes they point them at lions. That is what 
makes your father think they have become our friends. 
They do not kill any animals nowadays but lions.' 

"They travelled west across the Divide and de- 
scended between bleak white glaciers to the most 
beautiful water that Rocky ever had seen. 




Photograph by Fred H. Riser 

Avalanche Lake under the Sperry Glacier 



104 THE TOP OP' THE CONTINENT 

" 'I don't like to come down as far as this,' said 
Uncle Waggletoe, 'but I want you to see Lake Bow^man 
close by. There is nothing finer in all Goatland.' 

"Then they travelled south to the largest sheet of 
water Rocky had ever seen. 

***Lake AIcDonald is getting spoiled,' said Uncle 
Waggletoe, shaking his whiskers sadly. 'Too many 
men here. Look at that big house where they meet. 
There's a second group of houses down the lake and 
still another group at the head of the lake. And now 
they have houses floating on the water. Do you see 
that one ? It moves as fast as a bird. No, I'm going 
back to Mount Cleveland.' 

" 'But why?' asked Rocky. 'These creatures do 
not kill us any more. You say they are our friends. 
If they are our friends why should we nm aw^ay? 
The fact is, I rather like to see them moving around. 
They are interesting.' 

"Uncle Waggletoe gazed solemnly at his nephew for 
a long w^hile. Then he wagged his head slowly and said : 

" 'New times, new ideas. You young fellows actu- 
ally will tolerate these queer hind-legged creatures, 
eh ? But look there at that deer, quick ! ' 

"His left hind foot wagged rapidly. 

"Rocky looked at the big house by the lake side. 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 105 

A deer had come out of the woods and was walking 
calmly up to the door. A group of children ran out 
and patted its head and stroked its brow^n sides. 




Lopynght Oy I'red II. Kiser, Portland, Oregon 

Gunsight Lake east from Gunsight Pass 

Their gay shouts resounded across the water. Uncle 
Waggletoe's left hind foot wagged harder than ever. 
** * Scandalous !' he cried. 'There is your new spirit 
for you ! A disgraceful spectacle, I call that. I 
thought better of deer. I did not think they would 
deliberately associate with these men-creatures.' 



106 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"But Rocky's eyes were glistening. If goats can 
smile, I am sure he was smiling then. 

" *No, no, Uncle Waggletoe, I don't agree with you. 
I think those little baby men are cunning. I think — 
I'd — like — to — to — have them pat me.' 

"Uncle Waggletoe bowed his head in shame. For a 
long while he was silent. Then he groaned: 

" *I'm afraid my time has come. I cannot under- 
stand these new ideas. I think next year I shall go to 
Mount Cleveland and spend my remaining days in 
solitude.' 

"The next day they stood on the cliffs above Lake 
Margaret Wilson and watched its waters cascade 
twelve hundred feet into a hidden lake below. They 
crossed magnificent Gunsight Pass, they looked down 
upon beautiful Saint Mary Lake, spoiled in Uncle Wag- 
gletoe's eyes (but not in Rocky's) by the picturesque 
and luxurious chalets built upon its banks; and then, 
from the summit of Rising Wolf Mountain, they 
looked over upon the wonderful beauty of Two Medi- 
cine Lake and out upon the broad plains where the 
Blackfeet Indians, once so warlike, now work their 
peaceful farms. 

" 'I'll say this much for the new times,' said Uncle 
Waggletoe, 'that those Indians don't hunt us anymore. 




Photograph by Fred H. Kiser 

Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, St. Mary Lake 
Legend has it that a god who visited the Indians returned to Heaven from this summit 



108 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Grandfather Crookedhorn used to tell me stories of 
the time when they dressed in furs and feathers and 
chased us all over these mountains. They don't come 
up here much now, and, when they do, they let us 
alone.' 

"Near the summit of lofty Mount Stimson, Uncle 
Waggletoe met an old friend w^hom he had not seen for 
many summers. 

*' 'Well, if it isn't Daddy Shortbreeches ! ' he cried, 
rubbing noses with a goat of venerable countenance. 
'And who are these with you? Your grandchil- 
dren ? ' 

*' 'I'm showing them the world,' said Daddy Short- 
breeches. They talked long together, 

"Meantime Rocky leaped upon a ledge on which 
was perched a graceful young goat. 

" *Kid, your eyes shine like the stars,' he said. 
* What is your name ? ' 

" 'My name is Flower-Bright,' she said. 'Your 
eyes shine, too, and your young beard is whiter than 
the daisy's petal.' 

"This was Rocky's wooing. But he did not see 
Flower-Bright again until the next spring when her 
grandfather brought her to him at Grinnell Mountain. 

" 'You're only ten months old now,' said the old 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR. 



109 



goat grimly. 'You modern youngsters travel too fast 
for me. You can wait till the young birches bud.' 

"In September the two travellers returned. They 
had seen many wonderful sights. Their great adven- 




Photograph by llcrford Cowling 

Former inhabitants of Glacier National Park 

Once it was the hunting-ground of the Blackfeet Indians. The government purchased it and threw 

it open for mining, but there was not enough copper to pay; so it became a national park. 

ture was on the road back to Lake McDermott. Rocky 
had insisted upon going down to examine this strange 
trail over which extraordinary animals sped back and 
forth more swiftly than the fastest deer can run. 



110 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

" 'What is the name of that animal?' he asked, as, 
from a mountain top, they watched one glide by. 

" *I call it black lightning because it moves so fast. 
At night its eyes shine brighter than the sun. Your 
father thinks it is a deer, but it is more like a turtle 
than a deer. Some think it is a kind of horse, but it 
is too big for that. Twenty or thirty men can ride on 
one at once. The eagles tell me that these animals 
come from the southland. There were none here when 
I was young. They did not come till men made that 
wide trail down there. They never leave the trail; 
and not even the squirrels, who go very close to 
houses, have ever seen them eat.' 

"Uncle Waggletoe was loath to go down to look at 
the strange trail. 

" 'Suppose a black lightning should come,' he said. 

"But Rocky prevailed. Very reluctantly and cau- 
tiously his Uncle led the way across an intervening 
plain to the dusty road. They skirted it awhile before 
venturing to step upon it; but they found it pleasant 
walking and followed it for several miles. Then came 
their adventure. 

"Roimding a rocky point with a slight precipice 
upon one side. Uncle Waggletoe, who was in front, sud- 
denly spied an automobile stage approaching rapidly. 




Copyright by Fred II. Kiser, Portland, Oregon 

Where Lake Ellen Wilson emplies into Little St. Mary 



112 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Instantly he stopped and wagged his left hind foot at 
tremendous speed. He hesitated and reared. The 
automobile horn sounded and the passengers saw him 
and began to scream excitedly. For the first time in 
his life Uncle Waggletoe completely lost his head. Hi's 
fighting instinct was aroused. He lowered his horns 
and gathered himself together in defense. 

** Rocky 's first intimation of trouble was the rapid 
movement of his uncle's left hind foot. He bounded 
forward beside him and saw the strange black animal 
approaching. 

"As Uncle Waggletoe gathered for the attack, Rocky 
with a sudden instinct swung around and butted his 
Uncle full in the side, knocking him off the road. Down 
the sharp declivity they both rolled, over and over, 
got footing at the bottom, and galloped for the moun- 
tains at a speed which neither had ever equalled be- 
fore. The automobile passed slowly by, the passengers 
leaning from its side to watch their course. 

"In telling the story at home Uncle Waggletoe de- 
clared that the black lightning had followed them for 
two miles, and Rocky, who knew better because he 
had looked .back over his shoulder, did not deny it. 
That much was due to Uncle Waggletoe' s years and 
injured dignity. In fact, he made no comment even 



ROCKY M. GOAT, JR 



113 



when Uncle Waggletoe described the gnashing of the 
strange animars fearful teeth and the burning sensa- 
tion of its hot, panting breath. 




Photograph by Fred H. Kiser 



Summil of Jilackicei Mounuun 

"It was a jolly home-coming. Nearly two hundred 
goats gathered on Grinnell Mountain to welcome the 
wanderers and hear their strange adventures. And, 
when all had gone home, kindly Mother Goat gazed 
into her son's great soft eyes and affectionately licked 
his placid, kindly face. 



114 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

** 'You've grown so big,' she said thoughtfully. 
*Your beard is longer, and you have quite a masterful 
air, just like your father. Tell me, boy, what was the 
most wonderful of all the wonderful things you saw?' 

"Rocky did not hesitate a moment. 

** 'Flower-Bright,' he said." 

"Gee!" said Jack after a little silence, "that is 
some story, Uncle Tom. I only wish it was true." 

"Oh, quick, look, look !" exclaimed Margaret, point- 
ing excitedly far up the mountainside. "There's a 
white spot that moves ! See it ? Oh, dear, can't you 
see it?" 

"Yes," cried Jack, "and there's another right be- 
hind it. See? They're goats. And there is another 
little white spot following along behind. Do you 
see? 

Uncle Tom adjusted his field-glasses and examined 
the goats attentively. 

"As I live," he said, "they are Rocky and Flower- 
Bright and their little kid." 



VI 

THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 

MOUNT RAINIER THRUSTS ICY TENTACLES DOWN AMONG 
NATURAL GARDENS OF WILD FLOWERS 

WHAT makes that red spot there?" asked Mar- 
garet, pointing. 

"Oh!" exclaimed Aunt Jane, turning in sudden ex- 
citement to a pleasant-faced man who had volunteered 
at the hotel to accompany the party to the Nisqually 
Glacier. "Tell me, Doctor McKinley, is that the red 
snow?" 

"That's just what it is," said Doctor McKinley, smil- 
ing. "That is quite a small spot. Sometimes you may 
see acres of it." 

"What makes the snow red?" asked puzzled Mar- 
garet. 

"A tiny red plant," said Doctor McKinley. 

"A plant growing in the snow?" demanded Jack 
unbelievingly. Doctor McKinley nodded and described 
to Aunt Jane in some detail the microscopic fungus 
which sometimes tints the neve, or coarse snow near 
the head of a glacier a vivid rose color. 

"He's kidding Aunt Jane," Jack whispered to Mar- 

115 



116 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

garet. Then, in a louder voice: **I suppose we'll hear 
next that hop-toads live in crevasses." 

"No," said quick-eared Doctor McKinley, ** there are 
no hop-toads in the crevasses, Jack, but there are 
billions of little brown worms living in the soft snow 
on top of some of these glaciers." 

This also was too much for Jack's credulity. 

*' Let's see 'em," he demanded. 

"Oh, they are not so easy to find," said Doctor Mc- 
Kinley, smiling, "but when you do find a colony of 
them tjiey are easy enough to see. They are the larvae 
of some kind of small fly. But one must spend a good 
deal of time on the glaciers, as I do many summers, to 
run across these interesting things." 

"I saw a bunch of them the other day," said the 
guide, "while I was taking a party to the summit. 
No," turning to Jack, "Doctor McKinley isn't kid- 
ding you." 

" 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Ho- 
ratio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' " quoted 
Aunt Jane thoughtfully. 

"That's from Shakespeare," said Margaret, a little 
proud of her knowledge. "We had that in English 
last spring." 

This was their second day in the Mount Rainier 




Photograph by C iiHi^ and Miller 



The road to Paradise Valley 



118 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

National Park. They had seen the great, ghostly, 
snow-peaked mountain from Seattle, sixty miles away, 
and had declared it the most thrilling sight in their 
experience. They had seen it, larger and more glori- 
ously beautiful, from Tacoma, forty miles away; and 
their swift automobile trip from the park railroad- 
station to the hotel in Paradise Valley had been ac- 
companied by a chorus of delighted squeals from the 
children as the astounding white summit grew with 
nearness. At Paradise Valley, a rolling hillside meadow- 
land fringed with pines and carpeted with an extraor- 
dinary profusion of wild flowers, the vast white moim- 
tain with its long, narrow glaciers, winding down from 
the summit on every side, loomed enormously. There 
was no escaping it anywhere. It drew their gaze as 
inevitably as a magnet draws iron. Even while Mrs. 
Jefferson, Aunt Jane, and Margaret were on their 
knees among the wild flowers, sorting them, naming 
them, and exclaiming over their large size and bril- 
liant coloring, they kept looking up at the ice-covered 
mountain every few minutes. 

"I should like to live here forever !" exclaimed Mar- 
garet fervently. "Yes, I want to sleep and picnic 
among these flowers all the time and keep looking up 
at Mount Rainier." 



THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 119 

"It is the most wonderful contrast I can imagine," 
said Mrs. Jefferson. "The ice and the snow and the 
glaciers there, and these warm flowery meadows so 
close by." 

"The guide tells me that there are twenty-five feet 
of snow right on this spot in winter," said Aunt Jane. 
"How should you like to sleep in the snow, Margaret ? " 

"You can sleep in deep snow and keep warm, too," 
said Uncle Billy, joining them. "Enos Mills, the 
Rocky Mountain naturalist, told me that he had done 
so many times when he was caught out overnight on 
the summits. But it must be soft, fresh snow to keep 
you warm. When snow gets packed and icy it freezes 
you. Deer and other animals huddle together under 
soft snow winter nights and keep quite warm." 

Uncle Tom arrived with a government map. 

"Just look at this mountain," he said. "The snowy 
summit and the glaciers are printed in blue. You are 
supposed to be looking down upon it, as if you were 
up in a balloon. See, it looks something like an octo- 
pus or a starfish, but with ever so many more arms 
than a starfish." 

"What are those arms?" asked Jack. 

"Those are the glaciers," said Uncle Tom. "See 
how they reach far down among these flowery places ? 



120 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

That blue finger on the map is the Nisqually Glacier 
which we can see right in front of us. Place your 
hand flat on this stone here and spread out your 
fingers. That way. Now, your fingers are the gla- 
ciers and the spaces between them are these parks of 
pines and wild flowers like Paradise Valley where we 
now are sitting." 

"Are there many parks?" asked Aunt Jane. 

"Oh, a lot of them," cried Jack with his eyes on the 
map. "Here is one called Indian Henry's Hunting 
Ground. There's one called Spray Park; I suppose 
there are waterfalls there. And another is called 
Summerland." 

"Uncle Tom," asked Margaret, "what is a glacier, 
anyway? Of course I know it is a river of ice. But 
these seem so different from those wide, littler glaciers 
in the Glacier National Park. I don't understand." 

"These glaciers, my dear," said Uncle Tom, "are 
literally rivers of ice, as you say. They start in enor- 
mous hollows in the rocks several thousand feet below 
the top of the mountain which winter always keeps 
full of fresh snow. These hollows correspond to the 
springs or lakes where rivers of water start. This 
snow, of course, is immensely heavy and keeps slipping 
down the side of the mountain, just as the water in 




Photograph by Curtis and Miller 

The celebrated Nisqually Glacier 

From its cirque just below the summit one may follow its course to the right, then, after a sharp 
turn, to the left. The picture was taken in Paradise Valley 



122 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

springs and lakes overflows in streams. As the snow 
slips down the mountainside, following depressions 
in the rocks, just as the streams of water follow the 
valleys, it becomes packed hard; then it is called neve. 
A little farther down the pressure of the snow above 
squeezes it into ice; and a little farther down, this ice 
is so squeezed that it becomes hard and blue. 

**Like the river of water, this river of ice winds 
around through valleys. Do you see away up there 
how the Nisqually Glacier turns a corner around that 
huge rock? Like the river of water, it breaks into 
ripples when it runs down slanting places, and into 
cascades and waterfalls when it runs over precipices. 
Like the river of water, which grows bigger because 
other streams empty into it, the glacier grows bigger 
because other glaciers flow into it. Sometimes a 
glacier will flow for many miles, like the immense 
glaciers in the Mount McKinley National Park in 
Alaska; but sooner or later it will reach the point 
where ice melts, and there it will turn into a river of 
water. The melting-point is called the glacier's foot 
or snout." 

** Shall we see ice waterfalls?" asked Jack excitedly. 

"Yes," said Uncle Tom, "provided we climb high 
enough up one of these glaciers — up among the prec- 



124 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

ipices nearer the summit. But we can see rapids 
near here. They are not so very rapid, though, for 
the fastest of these glaciers only moves a foot or more 
a day." 

**What makes the crevasses?" asked Jack. ** There 
aren't any crevasses in rivers of water." 

"Yes, there are," said Uncle Tom. "The ripples in 
the rapids in a stream of water correspond to the 
crevasses in a glacier. You know that the deep chan- 
nel of a stream of water moves faster than the shallow 
edges, don't you?" 

"Oh, yes," said Jack. "That is always so." 

"And it is so in glaciers," said Uncle Tom. "And 
that difference in speed helps make the crevasses 
deep and gaping. The ice is pushed fast in the deep 
middle and held back on the shallow sides. That 
helps to tear open the crevasses." 

Margaret was intensely interested. 

"Is there any other way that a glacier is like a 
river?" she asked. 

"In almost every way," said Uncle Tom, "because 
a glacier is a river — an ice-river. Now, you have seen 
rivers or creeks carry down logs and floating branches 
and heap them up on the banks where they turn 
corners, haven't you?" 




Pliolograph by Curtis and Miller 

Looking down into a crevasse 
The ice in the Stevens Glacier is probably a thousand feet thick at this point 



126 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Margaret nodded, her eyes shining. 

"And you have seen rivers and creeks wash out 
deep channels and ravines in some spots and heap the 
sand up on the banks in other spots?" 

Both children assented. 

"Well, glaciers do the same thing. They tear 
enormous masses of rock loose from some parts of 
their courses and heap them up in other parts. They 
wear out deep channels in the softer rock and pile up 
the material in the valleys. That is the way the pre- 
historic glaciers built up those immense moraines that 
we saw in the Rocky Mountain National Park. If the 
Nisqually and these other great living glaciers here 
should ever disappear like those in the Rocky Moun- 
tain National Park, they would leave behind them the 
same kind of enormous moraines." 

Of course heedless Jack got into difficulties and 
caused a sensation. It was the day they spent on 
the Nisqually Glacier. The party, considerably aug- 
mented by other tourists at the hotel, started early. 
All were dressed warmly and wore hobnail shoes. All 
carried alpenstocks with sharp metal points. The guide 
also carried a long coiled rope. 

It was hard climbing up the glacier's irregular, 
broken surface. Sometimes they ascended long steep 



THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 127 

ice-hills upon which they found their alpenstocks of 
the greatest service. They crossed fields of coarse 
snow into which their feet sank deeply. Occasion- 
ally they lifted themselves by main strength over some 
long, uplifting ledge of blue ice. Often the guide 
straddled a narrow crevasse and steadied each in turn 
as he jumped across. 

"Gee, but this is some work, all right!" Jack ex- 
claimed more than once as he stopped for breath at 
the top of a sharp slope. 

But the experience possessed interest for all. Their 
objective was a group of wide, deep crevasses a mile 
or more up the glacier. Incidentally Doctor McKin- 
ley pointed out and explained the most interesting 
glacial phenomena. 

**I thought glaciers were all nice and white," grum- 
bled Margaret, ''but this one's dirty. There's most 
as much mud as snow, and some of the rocks aren't 
ice at all but really truly rocks." 

"It will get cleaner as we go up," said Doctor Mc- 
Kinley. "Look up the course ahead of us and you 
will see how white the snow is there. And as you 
approach the summit, it becomes as pure as any snow 
and ice in the world. Glaciers detach great quantities 
of rock and earth as they plough along their courses 



128 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

and carry them down to the foot, where they heap 
them up into big boulder fields. Those are called ter- 
minal moraines." 

They made long detours to get around the ends of 
large crevasses, into which the children peered with 
awe. It was a nervous day for Mrs. Jefferson, who 
feared that they would slip and fall. 

At last they came to one of the largest crevasses, 
and here the guide lined them up and made each hold 
the rope, so that, if some venturesome person slipped, 
the others could pull him back. He placed experienced 
climbers at intervals among the rest, and led the way 
along the edge of the crevasse till all were standing 
so close that they could look straight down into its 
depths. 

They seemed to be standing on the edge of a per- 
pendicular precipice hundreds of feet deep. In the 
depths the ice was blue and cold, and passages seemed 
to lead to chambers still deeper. 

"Some refrigerator!" said Jack admiringly. **Dad 
v/ouldn't need to kick about his ice-bills if he lived 
here." 

"I want to go down inside there," said Margaret. 

Margaret's wish was fulfilled, but not at that point. 
An hour later the guide led them by a long, circuitous 




Photograph by Curln and Miller 

■ Exploring Nisqually's crevasses 



130 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

route into ice-caves which extended far under the over- 
hanging ledges of icy surface. It was so still that Mar- 
garet shivered and clung tightly to her mother's hand. 

" It isn't so nice here as you thought it would be, is 
it, Margaret?" asked Mrs. Jefferson. 

"Oh, yes, it is," protested Margaret. "It's just 
splendid, and the ice walls and roof are the loveliest 
things I ever saw, but — but " 

And she clung the tighter. 

"Come back here, Jack!" called Uncle Billy sud- 
denly, for Jack had crept ahead of the party and was 
peering over an edge beyond. The sharp call echoed 
surprisingly loud and hollow in the cave, and Jack 
turned a startled face. At the same time he slipped 
and disappeared. 

Then there was excitement indeed. Several ladies 
screamed and others of the party exclaimed loudly. 
The cave magnified the noise and that further increased 
the excitement. The guide sprang forward and waved 
the others back. 

"Stay where you are!" he commanded. "Doctor 
McKinley, you come ! The rest of you stay back and 
hold this rope !" 

He threw them an end of the rope, the other end 
being fastened to his belt, and wriggled forward on his 



THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 



131 




At the same time he slipped and disappeared. — Page 130 



stomach till he leaned far over the edge. Doctor 
McKinley braced himself firmly and held the guide's 
legs. 

"Jack!" called the guide. "Jack!" 

When no response came from below, some of the 
ladies began to cry. But Mrs. Jefferson, white-faced, 



132 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

was not one of them. She held the rope firmly in one 
hand and with the other comforted Margaret. 

Then, with Doctor McKinley paying out the rope 
and the party holding its other end, the guide dropped 
over the edge into the dark gulf below. The rope 
slackened when there were only a few feet of it left 
in hand. At last he had reached bottom. There were 
twenty minutes of silence which seemed many hours 
to Mrs. Jefferson. Poor Margaret was crying hys- 
terically. 

Then from the depths came a cheerful shout: 

*'A-1-1 right ! Pull slowly." 

And in due time the guide appeared over the edge, 
steadying himself with the rope in his left hand and 
holding, with his right arm, a very badly frightened 
boy, who clung around his neck. 

'*He was caught on a ledge just a little way down," 
said the guide. "He ain't hurt much, I don't think, 
but he was too scared to speak and it took some time 
to find where he was. Then I heard him kind o' catch 
his breath and that located him. Then I climbed up 
to his ledge and got him. Nobody but boys ever gets 
hurt on these glaciers. There ought to be a law to 
keep 'em home." 

It is not surprising after this experience that Mrs. 



THE FROZEN 0( TOPUS 



133 



Jefiferson refused to let Jack join the party to the 
summit a couple of days later. Indeed, though Jack 
had learned his lesson well, she did not permit him to 
leave her side again. 




Photograph by A. U. Barnes 



On the Cowlitz Glacier 



After a long debate, Aunt Jane concluded to join 
Uncle Tom and Uncle Billy in the ascent of the Great 
Mountain with the party which had been forming at 
the hotel for several days. Her weeks of horseback 
and walking had put her into excellent physical con- 



134 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

dition. Two other women, experienced climbers, who 
were going with the party, thought she might venture 
after hearing of her successful ascent of Longs Peak. 

As they started at midnight, in order to be able to 
return by the following nightfall, the children did not 
see the party off. After breakfast Mrs. Jefferson took 
them by automobile to see the beautiful Narada Falls, 
where, at lunch, they were joined by Doctor McKinley 
afoot. 

"I thought you went with the summit party," said 
Mrs. Jefferson. 

"No," he said. "Four ascents are enough for one 
man. The last time I thought I knew the trail well 
enough to guide our little party myself, but we had a 
snow-storm coming down and I lost my way and did 
not get my people in till after midnight. We were all 
of us exhausted, and my brother frosted his foot so 
badly that he did not get over it all summer. I've had 
enough. It is one of the hardest climbs in the coun- 
try." 

"I am worried about my sister," said Mrs. Jeffer- 
son. 

"You need not worry," said Doctor McKinley. 
"Great is youtli. She is young enough to make little 
of it. And it is so supremely worth while. On one of 



THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 135 

my trips to the north side I saw an enormous avalanche 
plunging four thousand feet from the top of Willis 
Wall. It was a spectacle." 

"Doctor McKinley," said Margaret, '*a girl at the 
hotel says that Mount Rainier is a volcano. Now, 
isn't that silly ! I told her that volcanoes smoked 
and that the hot lava would melt all the ice. Wouldn't 
it?" 

**But the little girl was right," said Doctor McKin- 
ley. "Mount Rainier is a volcano, but it has not been 
in eruption for many, many years. But the first 
white settlers of the neighboring country reported a 
fall of ashes from its crater, and even now hot gases 
emerge from cracks in its rocks. These hot gases melt 
snow in places and form caves which have proved to 
be very useful refuges for people who were caught 
overnight at the summit. Mount Rainier is the 
biggest of a range of volcanoes which are called the 
Cascade Mountains. They extend from Canada in a 
long line through the States of Washington and Oregon 
and into California. Other peaks besides Mount 
Rainier are quite famous. Farthest to the north is 
Mount Baker, in Washington. Then comes Mount 
Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Saint Helen, Mount 
Hood in Oregon, and Mount Shasta in California. 



136 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

You may have heard all these famous volcanoes talked 
about. If not, you will some time. 

"Now, all these great mountains began by being 
holes in the ground out of which lava spurted. The 
lava and the ashes built the volcanoes. They must 
have been a fine spectacle from the sea if they were 
all active at once. John Muir once called them a line 
of blazing beacons. Then they became inactive. 
They may have become choked with ashes. Anyway 
they grew cold, and the winter snows turned them into 
ice-plated monsters like Mount Rainier." 

**But I thought that volcanoes all had sharp sum- 
mits like Mount Vesuvius and that Japanese volcano 
with the funny name," said Margaret. 

"You mean Fujiyama," said Mrs. Jefferson. 

"Probably they all were pointed at some period of 
their careers," said Doctor McKinley. "But strange 
accidents happen to volcanoes sometimes. Crater 
Lake, where you are going after you leave here, fills 
a hole in the ground. But above that hole was once a 
giant volcano nearly as high as Mount Rainier. One 
day the bottom fell out of it and the entire volcano 
tumbled in and disappeared somewhere inside the 
earth. 

"Mount Rainier's was a different kind of an acci- 



138 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

dent. It was pointed once, like Fujiyama, but one day 
two thousand feet of it were blown off by a fierce 
eruption. That is why its svimmit is blunted now." 

"Oh!" cried Margaret, clapping her hands. "That 
must have been a fine sight. Did anybody photo- 
graph it?" 

"No, indeed," he explained. "That and every- 
thing else I've been telling 3^ou happened long before 
Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden. There 
were neither cameras nor photographers in those days." 

"Well, how do you know it ever happened then?" 
Margaret demanded, big-eyed. 

"You'll find that out and hundreds of other happen- 
ings just as thrilling when you study geology," said 
Doctor IMcKinley. 

At dusk that night both children ran into the hotel 
in a state of great excitement. 

"Oh, ]\Iother!" cried Jack. "Three awful big old 
circus clowns just came for us outside there. At 
least one of them was little. She's a woman, and " 

"What do you mean?" demanded Mrs. Jefferson. 
"They came for you " 

"Yes, just ran right at us," began Jack. "They 
grabbed at us just like that." And Jack seized his 
mother's arm roughly. 



THE FROZEN OCTOPUS 139 

"And one of them tried to kiss me!" wailed Mar- 
garet. "Oh, they're the awfullest things! I " 

But Mrs. Jefferson with flushed face was hurrying 
to the door. 

Just without, consumed with laughter, were three 
persons with chalk-colored faces, large yellow spec- 
tacles, and red bandanna handkerchiefs around their 
necks. 

Mrs. Jefferson started, looked fixedly at them, and 
exclaimed : 

"Why, you children, you! What in the world are 
you doing rigged up like that ? Margaret ! Jack ! 
See, they are not real clowns. They are only Aunt 
Jane and your two uncles playing a joke on us. Don't 
you recognize them now?" 

And so it was. According to custom, they had 
painted their faces before starting for the snowy sum- 
mit that morning, in order to protect their skins from 
painful sunburn. 



VII 

WHAT HAPPENED TO MOUNT MAZAMA 

WHERE IT ONCE STOOD NOW LIES CRATER LAKE, THE DEEP- 
EST AND PERHAPS THE BLUEST LAKE IN THE WORLD 

ONCE Upon a time — and a long, long time ago it 
was, many thousands of years before the serpent 
tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden — a baby volcano 
was bom on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Smoke 
had long been struggling up from the intense heat far 
under the surface, and had found vent here and there 
through cracks in the rock and the softer earth. There 
had been an uplifting of the surface nearly to the 
present elevation of the Cascade Mountains, and hot 
gases had expanded and pressed upward, until at last 
a hole was torn in the earth's skin; and through this 
hole the struggling gases and the molten rock called 
lava burst forth. 

That is how the baby volcano was born. 

It was probably a pretty big baby right from the 
beginning. The hot dry ash thrown high in air upon 
the first explosion fell back around the hole, heaping 
up a cone-shaped mound. Up through the apex of 

140 



CRATER LAKE 141 

this cone rose the boiHng, seething lava. The lava 
poured down the sides and hardened, building the 
cone higher. Then followed other explosions from 
below and more ash fell upon the lava, building the 
cone still higher. Then came more lava, then more 
ash, and so on until after that very first series of erup- 
tions the baby volcano was perhaps several hundred 
feet high. 

A big fat baby, indeed. 

Thus it grew. No one now can make even a fair 
guess how fast it grew. There may have been long 
periods when there were no eruptions and it did not 
grow at all. There were probably periods of many 
years during which eruptions succeeded each other 
almost continuously, and then its growth must have 
been extremely fast. 

Meantime, all along the Pacific coast, where now are 
the great States of Washington and Oregon, other baby 
volcanoes had been born on the crest of the uplift and 
were growing just as fast. There must have been an 
enormous family of them, because in the course of a 
great many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years 
they grew so big that their sides overlapped and the 
hot ashes which the wind caught and blew for many 
miles in all directions filled up the valleys between 



U2 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

them. When that time came, instead of perhaps 
hundreds of detached volcanoes, a great mountainous 
range thousands of feet high paralleled the Pacific 
coast. Men call this to-day the Cascade Mountains. 

But all of these many volcanoes did not continue to 
live. Most of the babies died in childhood and were 
buried under the growing slopes of their bigger 
brothers and the immense masses of ash which the 
wind deposited in the hollows. 

As the smaller volcanoes choked up and disappeared 
below the growing surface, the lava which had been 
finding vent through them sought other doors of es- 
cape, and found them in the volcanoes of larger vent. 
This, of course, made the larger volcanoes grow all 
the faster. 

It was an example of the survival of the fittest, 
which is one of the first laws of nature. Those chil- 
dren who study the hardest become more and more 
able to study, and inevitably near the top of the 
class — another example of the survival of the fittest. 

The baby volcano which is the hero of our story was 
one of the fittest of its own great family; it became 
one of the survivors. It grew enormously, climbing 
always above the range as the range itself climbed 
higher. It was an ambitious volcano. When the grow- 



144 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

ing mountain range had swallowed most of the others 
and perhaps was approaching its own greatest size, 
this was among the very biggest of the fifteen or twenty 
peaks which continued to spout fire and float dense 
volumes of smoke hundreds of miles to sea upon the 
east wind. 

How many centuries these monsters lit the Pacific 
nights with their lurid torches no man can guess. One 
of them, now called Mount Rainier, lost two thousand 
feet of its summit in one mighty explosion; but it still 
remained fourteen thousand feet high. Most of the 
others suffered similar accidents, but still remained 
majestic mountains, and remain so to this day. Only 
one of them was totally destroyed, and that one is the 
hero of this amazing history. Though no man ever 
saw this great peak, which once may have towered 
even above Mount Rainier, it bears a name. But 
Mount Mazama was not named until centuries after 
it had ceased to exist. 

Other volcanoes have died the remarkable death of 
Mount Mazama, but none other possibly of equal size. 
Its extraordinary passing would have been a spectacle, 
had men lived then to see it, unequalled perhaps in all 
the earth's remarkable and dramatic history. 

Mount Mazama, possibly at the zenith of its great 



CRATER LAKE 145 

career, slipped down through the crust of the earth and 
totally disappeared. It was as if the foundations that 
held it up had suddenly given way. Its enormous 
mass, thrown up from below, returned into the pit 
from which it had come. Perhaps Dante might have 
described the awful spectacle. 

How do we know that this thing happened so long 
before human history ? Those patient students of the 
history and the romance of the rocks, the geologists, 
have found proofs which none may doubt. It is 
enough here to say that what is left of Mount Ma- 
zama's sloping sides indicates that it must have been a 
volcano sixteen thousand feet in altitude, and that a 
profound study of the inside of the rim through which 
it slipped proves that actually it did slip. That it 
was not blown out is proved by the fact that the lava 
sides which remain are composed only of material 
which flowed down from a lofty summit during regular 
eruptions. 

But this is not all the strange history of this vol- 
cano. The seething fires underneath the earth's sur- 
face attempted once more to burst forth through 
Mount Mazama's vent. But now the vent was choked. 
Again and again the fiery gases burst through the ruins 
of what was once so majestic a peak, only to be smoth- 



146 THE TOP Of^ THE CONTINENT 

ered by the masses of loosened ash. Three times were 
small craters actually formed. Then the fires were 
choked forever. 

But that is not all. Where Mount Mazama stood 
in awful fiery grandeur there appeared a lake of beauty 
so profound that to-day it is celebrated throughout 
the world. It suggests a fairy-story — this transform- 
ing touch that changed awfulness into loveliness. 
Spring-water seeped through the lava foundations of 
the tremendous pit that once was the towering moun- 
tain and filled it with water of wondrous blue. But it 
did not fill it full; it left walls a thousand feet high, 
lava walls of faint blue-grays, streaked and daubed 
with splendid colors which reflect in the lake's deep 
waters. 

The tomb of the monster Mazama is one of the 
wonder spots of sheer beauty in the wide world. 

** Doctor McKinley," said Margaret after a few mo- 
ments of silence, during which Mrs. Jefferson gazed 
thoughtfully into the gorgeous depths of Crater Lake, 
"that is more exciting than any fairy-story I ever 
heard. But what a dreadful shame that Mount 
Mazama died when all his brothers and sisters lived ! 
I 'spect they must of cried a lot." 

"Mount Rainier is crying rivers of icy tears yet, 



CRATER LAKE 



147 



Margaret," said Aunt Jane. **0h, but what an amaz- 
ing history ! Yes, it somehow changes one's whole 
conception of Crater Lake. It has become a new place 
for me. I suppose it must be very deep." 




Photograph by Herjord Cowling 

A pound trout is a small one 

"Two thousand feet," said Doctor McKinley. "It 
is supposed to be the deepest as well as the bluest 
lake in the world." 

"Where are your uncles?" asked Mrs. Jefferson. 

*Fishing," said Jack. "The mean things wouldn't 



148 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

take me. They said I'd rock the boat. Say, Mother, 
the trout here are awful big. A man said they were 
the hardest fighting trout anywhere." 

"They are good fighters. Jack," said Doctor McKin- 
ley. "The water is very cold, you know. Yes, they're 
big. The little ones run a pound. I won't take you 
fishing. Jack, but I'll take the whole party out in the 
launch. No one has seen Crater Lake who has not 
skirted its shores in a boat." 

Mrs. Jefferson, after an automobile ride to different 
points on the ruin, had agreed that the deep blue, 
which she had considered a gross exaggeration in the 
pictures and lantern-slides she had seen at home, did 
not begin to express the wonder of the lake's actual 
color. 

"Under different slants of light, it is every shade of 
blue there is," she said. "Right down there now, it is 
deeper than any indigo or Prussian blue I ever have 
seen. It is really almost black. And compare that 
with the vivid greenish blue of the edges." 

"But the wonderful water," said Aunt Jane, "seems 
to me scarcely as wonderful as these mauve cliffs. It 
is hard to say just what color they really are. Some- 
times they are gray, sometimes blue, sometimes pur- 
ple, sometimes yellow, but mostly, I think, mauve. 




Photograph by Fred II. Riser 

The water is bluer than the darkest indigo 



150 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

They change their color from hour to hour. A cloud 
floats across the sun and instantly we have a new color 
scheme. When that thunder-storm threatened yester- 
day, the whole lake acquired a foreboding, almost ter- 
rible, aspect; and yet at sunset it became a sort of 
painter's palette, a riot of glorified color — every soft 
and gentle tint you can conceive, set off against the 
heavy but translucent shadows under the western 
cliffs." 

"Yes," put in Mrs. Jefferson eagerly, **and before 
sunrise it is again altogether different. I looked at it 
from my window this morning. The walls were gray 
then, and you could plainly see those great splashes 
of sulphur yellow across the lake. The water then 
was the color of polished steel. The surface ap- 
peared hard, as if frozen. It looked as if a rock 
thrown upon it would bounce up and skim across the 
surface of the lake." 

**Yes," mused Doctor McKinley, "I have travelled 
the world and have seen nothing just like this. There 
are other crater lakes, one in Mexico, several in Aus- 
tria and elsewhere, but nothing that compares with 
this. It has something of the color glory of Capri; 
something of the mystery of the Grand Canyon; 
something of the fairylike impossibility of afternoon 




n\\i\n*^\~ ^tm.\CH^ — tMMtv 



'Just look fcr a moment over there at the Phantom Ship," interrupted 
ISIrs. Jefferson 



15^2 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

in the Yosemite Valley. It has all these — and some- 
thing else. It is alone." 

"Just look for a moment over there at the Phan- 
tom Ship," interrupted Mrs. Jefferson. "The water 
is so pale you scarcely can call it blue." 

"Where is the Phantom Ship?" asked Margaret. 

"Right over there," said her mother, pointing. 

"I don't see it," said Margaret. 

"Why — why" — hesitated Mrs. Jefferson — "it was 
there. Exactly there by that cliff. I can't seem to 
see it now. That is very strange. Why, I would have 
made my affidavit " 

"Mother's dreaming," said Jack. "The color has 
gone to her head." 

"It wouldn't seem strange to me if it did go to her 
head," said Aunt Jane. "I actually feel unreal myself, 
I'm not sure, somehow, that I'm here at all." 

" We're all dippy," said Jack. " To tell you the truth 
I thought I saw the Phantom Ship, too. But she isn't 
there and that's a fact." 

"Doctor McKinley," said Mrs. Jefferson with 
heightened color, "will you point out the Phantom 
Ship ? I was so sure I saw it in that spot. Now I feel 
all turned around." 

Doctor McKinley was laughing. 




Photograph by Uerjord Cowling 



The Phantom Ship 



154 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Certainly, I can," he said. "It is exactly there, 
under that headland, just where you said it was." 

"But I can't see it," persisted Mrs. Jefferson. 

By this time all were looking intently at the spot, 
but no one saw it. Doctor McKinley was laughing 
silently. 

"I don't believe you see it yourself," said Jack de- 
fiantly. 

"I don't," said Doctor McKinley calmly. 

They all turned to him. 

"He's dippy, too," Jack whispered to Margaret. 

"That's why it is called the Phantom Ship," said 
Doctor McKinley, smiling. "In some conditions of 
atmosphere, particularly on a warm day like this, that 
curiously shaped rock will disappear and reappear in 
the most mysterious way. Other objects on the water 
may do the same thing. It's a kind of mirage." 

"There it is !" shouted Jack. 

And there it was again, exactly where Mrs. Jeffer- 
son had first seen it. 

Even the children were silent during the afternoon 
hours in the boat. The reflections of the marvellously 
carved and painted lavas in the still, deep waters ab- 
sorbed them. But even these were not so fascinating 
as the ripples made by the boat's prow; every painted 



CRATEK LAKE 155 

wavelet was tipped momentarily with a blue so gor- 
geous that, as Aunt Jane said, no paint could reproduce 
its value. 

The afternoon closed with a sunset view from the 
cliffs. They had trout for dinner. 

Watching the lake by moonlight. Doctor McKinley 
told them the Indian legends. 

Crater Lake was once the kingdom of the great god 
Llao. Here he ruled a multitude of strange, ferocious 
creatures which resembled crawfish. They were of 
enormous size. It was nothing for one of them to lift 
a claw from the lake's surface and pluck a deer from 
the top of the highest cliff. Several of these cliffs are 
two thousand feet high. 

Llao had an enemy, the brave Spirit Chieftain Skell, 
whose kingdom was the Klamath Alarshes, twenty 
miles away. He also had an army of servants, not so 
huge and ferocious as Llao's, but possessed of the 
power to change themselves at will into other forms. 
Sometimes Skell 's servants bounded over the cliffs of 
Crater Lake in the form of antelopes. Sometimes, as 
eagles, they soared aloft above its surface. Many were 
the bitter wars waged between Llao and Skell. 

In one of these wars Skell was too venturesome. 
Llao's monsters captured him and dragged him be- 



15G THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

neath the blue waters. It was decided to wreak a 
terrible vengeance upon him. So they tore out his 
heart, still living. 

Then the monsters climbed the many mountains in 
the outlying region, each monster upon a separate 
peak. They played ball with Shell's living heart, 
tossing it from mountain-peak to mountain-peak, 
from monster to monster. 

But Skell's followers came to the rescue. As eagles 
they circled around the peaks, and one of them caught 
Skell's heart in flight. The monsters pursued, but the 
eagle, hard pressed, dropped Shell's heart to another 
warrior, who, in the form of an antelope, was follow- 
ing on the land below. The antelope slipped through 
the woods and into dark ravines, and escaped with it. 

Shell's heart still lived, and back in the Klamath 
Marshes his body grew again around it. 

Years passed and Shell, recovered and with plans 
matured, again made war. It was a long and bloody 
war, and in the end Llao was captured. The monsters 
retired to the deep waters. 

Shell took Llao to the top of the highest cliff over- 
looking Crater Lake, and tore him into small pieces. 

He threw the fragments, one by one, into the lake, 
and the monsters, not recognizing them as fragments 




Photograph by Fred H. Riser 

The painled lava rim and Phantom Ship 



158 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

of their great chief's body, seized and ate them as 
they fell. Finally, he threw Llao's head into the lake. 
The monsters recognized that and did not touch it. 

Llao's head lies in Crater Lake to-day. It is partly 
exposed, and men call it Wizard Island. 

"What?" exclaimed Jack, "Wizard Island? That 
little volcanic crater that sticks out of the water, the 
one we rowed to and climbed the other day?" 

"That," said Doctor McKinley solemnly, "is Llao's 
head. And Llao Rock, where you went with your 
Uncle Tom, is the cliff from which Skell threw it into 
the lake." 

"Gee !" said Jack. 

"For many years," continued Doctor McKinley» 
"the Indians would not come near the lake. They 
feared Llao's monsters. Some would venture occa- 
sionally to the rim and look down for a few moments, 
but only the great braves did that. 

"Once a band of Klamath Indians came unexpect- 
edly upon it, and ran away in terror. But one, charmed 
by its beauty, dared to stay awhile, and no evil befell 
him. So a few days later he returned, but saw no 
monsters. He repeated his visits. He even lighted a 
camp-fire and slept there. Nothing happened. 

"He wanted to see these waters close by, to peer 



CRATER LAKE 159 

into them, and perhaps catch a gHmpse of one of the 
monsters. So one day he crept down a forest-covered 
slope and lay a long time at the water's edge under 
cover. Then he ventured to bathe in the waters, and 
suddenly felt wonderfully strong. He went back to 
his tribe and performed marvellous feats of strength. 
It seemed certain that these waters possessed great 
virtue. Another Indian ventured, bathed, and also 
received supernatural strength. So in time the whole 
tribe bathed there. They became the most powerful 
tribe in the world. That is how the Indians lost their 
fear of Crater Lake." 

"Margaret," said Jack the next morning', "I like 
Doctor McKinley mighty well. But I wonder why he 
came down here with us. You remember he was going 
east the day after we met him at Mount Rainier. He 
said he had an important engagement in Chicago that 
he could not possibly break. But he stayed with us 
there just the same, and now he's down here, too." 

"Don't you know why?" Margaret looked very 
wise. Jack shook his head. 

"Boys don't know anything," said Margaret. "I 
never saw such stupid things." 

"But why?" demanded Jack. "If you know, stop 
your kidding and tell me." 



160 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"I'm not kidding," said Margaret. "Any girl would 
know without being told. It's Aunt Jane, of course." 

"Aunt Jane?" asked Jack. "What do you mean? 
What's Aunt Jane got to do with it?" 

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed Margaret scornfully. "He 
doesn't know even when he's told ! Boys are the 
stupidest!" 

Jack looked at her some time in silence. Then his 
eyes opened very wide. 

"Do you mean," he gasped, "that he's spoons on — 
Oh, ginger pop !" 

"Why, of course. I knew it the second day he was 
with us. Can't you see that that's what makes Uncle 
Billy so different lately? He doesn't say a word any 
more, and he laughs hollow." 

Jack looked dazed. Uncle Billy, too? Margaret 
laughed tauntingly. 

"Do — you — mean — " began Jack, and stopped with 
open mouth. 

"Why, of course I mean," said Margaret. "Any girl 
would know it. I've known it for ages and ages." 



VIII 
THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 

BUT THERE IS MUCH MORE THAN THE VALLEY IN THE 
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 

IN their tour of the national parks, the Jeffersons 
had found no repetitions. Each park had im- 
pressed them with its own personality. Each had 
proved so different from every other that, except for 
their common possession of mountains, forests, streams, 
and valleys, no one of them suggested any other. 
The Yosemite National Park was no exception; in 
fact, it emphasized the rule. 

"One of the Government booklets stated that the 
Yosemite Valley was incomparable, but I didn't quite 
believe it," mused Aunt Jane. "Now I know it must 
be true. Surely there can be nothing in all the world 
like this, or comparable with it. These sensational 
granite cliffs would be enough, this exquisite valley 
would be enough, these amazing waterfalls would be 
enough. To have them all together in one spot seems 
almost too much. Somehow I feel suppressed and 
humble." 

161 



162 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

But there was nothing suppressed or humble about 
Jack. The Yosemite Valley did not affect him that 
way. In fact he had uttered an unrestrained whoop 
upon approaching the Gates of the Valley; he had 
shouted at his first sight of El Capitan, and had led 
the chorus of exclamations over Bridal Veil Fall. As 
their automobile stage had farther penetrated the 
valley, his shouts had become louder and more fre- 
quent. 

"If you will only stop your noise just for a minute 
now and then," said Margaret, "some of the rest of 
us would have a chance. Why, I haven't heard my- 
self yell yet. It isn't fair." 

But Jack did not even hear her. He had just 
caught sight of Half Dome. 

"Gee!" he shouted, "look at the old monk. Gee! 
See the size of him. Say, Mother, do you see the old 
monk? Say Uncle Billy, is that just a rock? Oh, 
what a whopper ! Say, Uncle Tom, can you climb up 
there? Say, Margaret " 

Jack did not wait for answers to his questions. He 
was too excited. And the others were far too ab- 
sorbed themselves to understand or to answer. 

But when, an hour later, they stood at the foot of 
the Yosemite Falls and gazed up a clear half mile of 




Half Dome rises 5,000 feet above the Yosemite Valley 



164 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

falling water, Jack really was startled into two or three 
minutes of silence. When he did break forth again 
he beat his own best record. 

"YouVe found your master at last, Jack," said 
Uncle Billy during the interval, "but it took the 
highest waterfalls in the world to talk you down." 

"How high are they?" asked Mrs. Jefferson at last. 

"The lower fall," said Uncle Tom, "which looks 
so tiny by comparison with the upper fall, is twice as 
high as Niagara Falls. The upper fall, which is by 
far the loftiest in the world, is nine times as high as 
Niagara. From the crest of the upper fall to the pool 
at the foot of the lower fall just lacks half a mile." 

"It seems to fall so slowly," said Aunt Jane. "How 
leisurely the water floats down. All the waterfalls 
I've ever seen fairly rushed down. As a matter of 
fact, the lower fall moves faster than the upper fall. 
Why is that ? The same natural laws govern both." 

" That," said Uncle Tom after a few minutes' thought- 
ful study, "looks true, but isn't. The water seems to 
fall more slowly in the bigger fall because we do not 
realize how high the big fall is. The movement ap- 
pears slow because the water has so very far to travel. 
As a matter of fact, the water near the bottom of the 
larger fall may be dropping faster than that of the 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 165 

lower fall. It is farther from us, too, which helps the 
illusion." 

The Jeffersons, whether living in hotel or public 
camp, always had been most comfortably cared for, 
but they were hardly prepared for the luxurious living 
they found possible in the Yosemite. The big hotel 
supplied every reasonable need. One of the several 
large public camps was equipped with small log houses 
instead of tents, each lighted with electricity, and 
heated with a small wood-stove. Two of the camps 
had swimming-baths. And miles away in the wilder- 
ness were chalet camps equipped with grills and shower- 
baths for the comfort of travellers by trail. 

But the children wanted to camp out — "really, truly 
camp out. Mother, and do our own cooking." 

"Why not?" asked Uncle Billy. 

So the supervisor assigned them a camp ground in 
the upper part of the valley alongside the rippling 
Merced River, and a camping outfit complete, even to 
cooking utensils, crockery, and linen, was rented in the 
village and speedily set up. 

"It's just like a fairy-story," said Margaret. "The 
fairy godmother waves her wand, and here we are 
with everything we want. Uncle Billy makes a splen- 
did fairy godmother." 



166 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

And what fun they had ! Mrs. Jefferson was cook, 
Aunt Jane housemaid, Jack fireman and woodchopper, 
Margaret waitress, and all hands dish-washers. For 
two or three mornings Mrs. Jefferson went to market 
and ordered provisions to be delivered by wagon at the 
tent-door. Then a neighbor pointed out a telephone 
fastened to a near-by tree, and, much to the children's 
mystification, there was no more going to market. 

In the morning, Margaret would say she wanted 
steak for limch, and in a little while a boy would walk 
in with the steak. 

''It's like the Arabian Nights," Margaret would say. 
"You are the fairy. Mother, not Uncle Billy." 

Jack teased to know how Mrs. Jefferson brought 
about this magic. How did the shops in the village 
know what she wanted? 

"I just wave my hands to old Half Dome up there, 
and whisper what I want," said Mrs. Jefferson, **and, 
presto, it is here." 

"How lovely!" cried Margaret, clapping her hands. 

"Mother's just fooling us," said Jack, "and I'm 
going to find out how she does it." 

"Please don't. Jack," pleaded Margaret. "I don't 
want to know. I'd rather think it is old Half Dome 
sends us the things we want." 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 



167 



Mrs. Jefferson 
managed to keep up 
the mystery for 
nearly a week. It 
was sometimes diffi- 
cult to evade Jack's 
vigilance long enough 
to disappear into the 
little clump of trees 
and telephone her 
orders. But she did 
it, and Margaret 
continued to live in 
fairy-land. Jack, 
however, was not to 
be foiled; when he 
failed to solve the 
mystery in camp, he 
walked all the way 
to the village and 
asked the butcher. Then he diligently searched the 
woods till he found the hidden telephone. 

But Margaret cried for a few minutes when he an- 
noimced his triumph at the dinner-table; she refused 
to forgive him for a whole hour. 



L- 




Mrs. Jefferson managed to keep up the 
mystery for nearly a week 



168 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Jack is the meanest thing in California," said 
Margaret. 

"Never mind, Margaret," said Mother. "I am 
very well satisfied with you both. It is too bad that 
fairy-land was destroyed, but — well, I feel surer now 
than ever that Jack will get along in the world." 

For a while the party idled in the dreamy, exquisite 
valley. They fished a little in the Merced but caught 
no trout. They explored the valley afoot, in auto- 
mobiles, and on horseback. They spent a never-to-be- 
forgotten morning at the base of majestic El Capitan. 
They photographed the Three Brothers and Cathedral 
Spires. They studied Yosemite Falls from every point 
of view, spending one day in a climb to the top, where 
they ate luncheon while peering over its crest into the 
wonderful valley so far below. They picnicked on the 
Happy Isles, and lost their hearts to Vernal Fall. 
They gloried in the color changes as the sun shifted 
the shadows with the passing hours. They marvelled 
at the tricks that sunset played with Half Dome. 

Occasionally they had afternoon swims in one of 
the pools. One evening Uncle Billy took Mrs. Jeffer- 
son and Aunt Jane to a dance at the hotel while Uncle 
Tom stayed in camp with the children. They found 
the pleasantest of neighbors among the campers, many 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 



169 



of whom brought their cars with them and camped all 
summer, returning year after year. At the hotel and 
on the trails occasionally they met friends from the 
East. They made up parties for more distant trail 









A 


n ^^ 




kd^ 


^M d 


r 






^■ms 


^^KBSmM iibltP^^^ 


g 




S^'S 


m^M 


t^hj 


~ 


iilHI 




m 




mi- ' 


9 


^^!^^L^:^:.i 





Cathedral Spires (centre) and Cathedral Rocks (right) 

rides, spending a night or two in the far-away chalet 
camps. 

Jack had never cared as much for fishing as most 
boys, but one of these excursions made him an ardent 
angler. The excursion was to Lake Merced, fifteen 



170 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

miles up the river by trail. They had not intended 
making the trip. It grew out of an excursion to Glacier 
Point, which rises thirty-three hundred feet almost 
perpendicularly from the valley floor. They took the 
long trail past beautiful Vernal Fall and majestic 
Nevada Fall. They lunched at the top of Nevada 
Fall while their horses cropped stray clumps of grass 
near by. 

As they approached Glacier Point a view disclosed 
itself so different from any they had yet seen that 
they were overcome with surprise. The Yosemite 
Valley itself was hidden, but, from this great height 
they looked up the entire length of two noble canyons, 
at the near-by junction of which Half Dome lifted its 
majestic, hooded head. Both valleys were disclosed to 
the distant range of sun-topped mountains, called the 
High Sierra, in which originated these clear, trout- 
haunted rivers. 

**I scarcely believe," said Uncle Tom, ''that the 
world contains a view of nobler beauty than this." 

Commanding this view at the highest point stood 
an excellent hotel where they registered for the night, 
and then climbed over the rocks to Glacier Point to 
look down from behind the iron railing into the Yosem- 
ite Valley. It was a day of sensations and emotions. 




Vemal Fall 



17!^ THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Nothing but Margaret's timely screams and Uncle 
Tom's quick restraining hand prevented Jack from 
climbing out on the rock which overhangs the Yosem- 
ite Valley. 

** People do go out there," said Jack, protesting. 
** There's lots of photographs down in the village 
showing people standing there. I saw one with two 
girls sitting on the edge dangling their feet over the 
valley." 

"Nevertheless, you are not going on the Overhang- 
ing Rock, or anywhere near it," said Uncle Tom 
sternly. "You understand, do you?" 

Jack was a little awed. Uncle Tom never before 
had spoken just that way. 

"Yes," he said meekly. 

"One step toward it," said Uncle Tom, "and you 
go into the hotel and stay there for the rest of the 
day. You understand me." 

Jack remembered the ice-cave at Mount Rainier. 
He needed no more warnings. 

They dined on the porch of the hotel overlooking 
the High Sierra and watched the sunset. Just before 
the sun sank behind them, the effect was magical. 
The shadows rapidly deepened in the valleys, shutting 
out even the Vernal and Nevada Falls, until only the 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 



173 



highest peaks, the gigantic head of Half Dome, and the 
snow-capped monsters on the horizon glowed in bril- 
liant rose tints. Then, almost like the dropping of a 
curtain, the whole spectacle darkened. 




Liberty Cap and Nevada Fall 

They sat in silence for a while, and then slowly arose 
and turned away. 

'*0h, look — look!" cried Margaret. ''Something's 
happened! Oh! oh!" 

They turned back quickly and looked again. Some- 



174 THE Tor OF THE CONTINENT 

thing indeed had happened. For again the whole 
scene glowed. A rich, mellow, golden light, shot 
through with indefinable rose tints, pervaded, rather 
than lighted, the magical setting. It was like nothing 
any of them had seen before. It was mystical, unreal, 
almost ghostly. The strange light increased rapidly. 
All held their breath. Even Jack was still and silent. 

" Wonderful ! " exclaimed Aunt Jane fervently. " But 
what is it ?" 

"The afterglow," explained a voice behind her. 

**And look at Half Dome," whispered Mrs. Jeffer- 
son. "Jack is right about him. He is a monk. From 
here, in this light, those rock shoulders are like arms 
outstretched. His head is bowed. He is pronouncing 
the day's benediction upon the sleeping valley." 

The spirit of adventure possessed the party the next 
morning, and, unequipped as they were for more than 
one night's outing, nevertheless they determined to 
push on up the canyon to Merced Lake. They passed 
through a region of glacier-polished granite lying in 
long, sharp slopes from the mountain ridges down into 
the noble canyon through which frothed the Merced. 
The trail led far enough up the mountainsides to clear 
the dangerously smooth granite. 

In mid-afternoon they reached a lake lying among 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 175 

mountain tops. Hidden in a pine forest at its head 
was a large and comfortable camp where well-furnished 
tents were assigned them. 

"I'm going fishing," said Uncle Billy as soon as they 
were well settled. 

''And I," said Uncle Tom. 

**And I," said Jack. 

"And I," said Margaret. 

"And I," said Aunt Jane. 

"And I, too," said Mrs. Jefferson, "though I've not 
been fishing since, as a little girl, I caught minnows in 
the brook in Father's south woods." 

They hired rods and flies and rowed out upon the 
lake in boats. Here Margaret caught her first trout. 
In fact, they all caught a few trout. 

"They're not very big," said Jack; "not much 
bigger than Adirondack trout." 

"You want to ketch a big one, eh?" laughed the 
boatman. "Well, I know a hole in the river. Get 
your dinner very early and come on out. I'll give you 
a chance." 

Dinner in a big tent was hot, varied, plentiful, and 
well served. The boatman awaited them outside. 
He led Jack and his two uncles to a long bend in the 
river, shallow on one side, swift and deep on the 



176 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

other. He tied the boat to overhanging willows and 
let it drift with the current. They settled themselves 
comfortably in it and cast in turn, allowing their flies 
to float down over the swift depths. 

Uncle Tom caught the first fish, a fine rainbow- 
trout twelve inches long. It fought gamely in the 
fast water. Then Uncle Billy took one somewhat 
larger. Jack lost two in succession, one of which ran 
rapidly down-stream, bending his rod and pulling free. 

''That was some fish," said the boatman. ''It's 
your own fault you lost him. You'd ought to have 
give him line. Next time you get a fish like that, 
don't pull; let him have all the line he wants. Let 
him tire himself out. He'll ketch himself if you'll 
only let him." 

Jack almost cried with vexation, but presently for- 
got it in Uncle Tom's hard fight with a trout which 
measured sixteen inches when, at last, it lay in the 
bottom of the boat. 

"Oh, I see how," Jack said after they all had suffi- 
ciently admired the beautiful prize. "I watched how 
you did that, Uncle Tom. One time you let him have 
so much line I thought you'd never get him back 
again." 

Several smaller fish were landed; then the trout 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 



177 



ceased to rise. Jack had 
had several rises, but 
had hooked none. 

"Just my luck!" he 
complained. ** The only 
time I hook a big fish I 
lose him." 

''It's all over," said 
Uncle Billy. "They've 
stopped rising. Anyway, 
it's time we stopped. 
The sun's down, and it 
is getting late. We've 
had good sport while it 
lasted." 

Jack continued cast- 
ing after his uncles had 
taken apart their rods 
and were impatiently 
urging him to come. 

"Just once more, and 
then I'll come sure," 
said Jack. "I promise." 

Then it happened 

His long line had 




Many years ago the Yosemite Valley was 
the safe retreat of the Indians 



178 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

drifted far down over the deepest current, and the fly 
straightened out and curved across the stream. There 
was a break in the water and a sHght tug at the Hne. 
Jack's impetuous impulse was to jerk, but he remem- 
bered just in time. He Hfted the tip sharply. The 
line tightened and the rod bent. 

"Give him line," shouted Uncle Tom. 

But the fish took line without permission, pulling 
it swiftly from the reel. The moment the slack came. 
Jack raised his rod and began to draw the line in with 
his left hand as he had seen Uncle Tom do. The fish 
followed, stopped, turned, and made again down- 
stream. Then Jack, who was breathing hard with 
excitement, suddenly calmed. He was not going to 
lose his head. He determined to land that trout. He 
stood erect in the boat, and braced his feet firmly. 

"I don't want anybody to say a word to me," he 
said. "I'm going to land this fish myself or lose him." 

It was a good many minutes before Jack landed his 
trout. Time and again the fish came to the boat side 
only to dart away. Once it took so long a run down- 
stream that Jack thought it was gone. 

Finally, however, the tired trout gave it up, and 
Jack drew it gently alongside the boat for the last 
time. Uncle Billy lifted it in. 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 179 

"Gee, it's a shad!" Jack shouted as he saw its 
broad, beautiful proportions. His triumph and pent-up 
excitement found sudden vent. He dropped on his 
knees with a shout, gathered up the flopping fish, and 
hugged it. 

"Look out! You'll lose him yet," said the boat- 
man sharply. "Trout are full o' tricks." 

"That's the finest trout I've ever seen," said Uncle 
Tom. "How beautiful a big rainbow is, an3rway ! 
How deep and full-bodied !" 

"Three pounds and a half, I should say," said the 
boatman admiringly. 

The trout measured twenty-one inches. 

That is how Jack became an angler. 

They returned the next day by way of Cloud's Rest, 
the highest point abutting the valley, into which they 
looked down from an elevation of more than a mile. 
Here they were nearly a thousand feet higher than 
Half Dome, and were able to see the top of the hooded 
monster. 

The famous Yosemite Valley is only seven miles 
long, and an average of one mile wide. Several of its 
lofty, perpendicular walls, if toppled over, would nearly 
reach the other side. 

"What makes it so awfully different from all the 



180 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

other places we've seen?" asked Margaret. "It isn't 
a bit like other valleys." 

**Its geological history is very interesting," said 
Uncle Tom. *'I talked the other night at the hotel 
with Doctor Blank of the United States Geological 
Survey, who is up here testing a new scientific theory. 
Once all this was solid granite. There was no deep 
valley, only a gentle depression, probably, down 
which rushed a stream of water from back in the High 
Sierra. There were thousands of other streams in 
these mountains very much like it, and they all cut their 
own valleys. But right here the granite must have 
been fractured in such a way as to give the water a 
greater chance with it than elsewhere, for this valley 
was eroded much deeper and faster than any other. It 
may have had a steeper grade, which would have given 
the river greater cutting power." 

**What do you mean by faster?" asked Aunt Jane. 
"Water surely cannot wear down granite very fast." 

"You are right," said Uncle Tom. "When a geol- 
ogist speaks of a river eroding a granite valley fast, 
he does not mean what we mean when we say 
fast." 

"He means thousands of years, I suppose," said 
Mrs. Jefferson. 




Photograph by Pillsbury 



The Yosemite Valley 



182 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"No, he means millions of years," said Uncle Tom. 
"We cannot appreciate what millions of years mean. 
No one ever shall be able to realize it. Doctor Blank 
says that modem science tends to think of geological 
ages as much longer than formerly was supposed. It 
may have taken several hundred million years for the 
river to wear down this valley." 

"Wliat made the waterfalls?" asked Margaret. 

"These lesser streams, of course, originally ran into 
the ]Merced at more or less the same level. But, as 
the main valley was cut deeper and deeper, these 
streams were left hanging higher and higher up in the 
air, till at last the Yosemite Falls over there had to 
drop half a mile to reach the bottom." 

"Yes." said Jack, "but Doctor ]\IcKinley told us at 
Mount Rainier that a valley cut out by a river had 
sides like the letter Y. and this valley has a wide, flat 
floor. So your nice theory doesn't prove." 

"Yes, it does," said Uncle Tom, "for m}^ storv' isn't 
finished yet. After the river had worn the valley as 
deep as it is now, or even deeper (and then it may have 
been shaped like the letter Y), an immense glacier 
crept slowly through it. and. for maybe hundreds of 
thousands of years, scooped out its comers and shaped 
it the way it is now. It was this glacier that polished 



THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 183 

those granite slopes that we saw the other day up near 
Merced Lake." 

**But it didn't scoop out old El Capitan," said Jack. 

"No, El Capitan proved more than a match for it," 
said Uncle Tom. "But it did slice off one side of 
Half Dome. Half Dome was a whole dome originally, 
you know. The glacier must have undercut its base, 
so that one side split off and fell upon the ice, and was 
carried far down the valley." 

"Gee !" said Jack, "that was some big job." 

"But, Uncle Tom," said Margaret, "I should have 
thought that the glacier would have scooped out all 
that nice black soil on the floor of the valley." 

"That soil came there long after glacial times, 
Margaret," replied Uncle Tom. "After the ice re- 
ceded, there followed thousands of years more of water 
erosion. At first the Merced River may have filled 
the valley from side to side, gradually becoming smaller 
in volume as the glaciers and snow-fields in which it 
originated in the High Sierra became smaller. It was 
the Merced River which deposited the rich soil which 
you now find on the valley's floor." 

But the Yosemite Valley, with its seven or eight 
square miles of area, is a very small part indeed of the 
eleven hundred square miles contained within the 



184 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

borders of the Yosemite National Park. In this mag- 
nificent area of forests and mountains there are hun- 
dreds of beautiful lakes and thousands of streams 
which very few tourists ever visit. The Jeffersons 
could not afford the time to explore the greater park, 
but they determined to make one trip above the val- 
ley's rim, "to sample it," as Jack phrased it. 

**I want to see the Tuolumne water-wheels," said 
Uncle Tom. **I have heard it predicted that fifty 
years from now the Canyon of the Tuolumne will be 
acknowledged to possess the most celebrated water- 
spectacle in the world. Now that camps and an auto- 
mobile road exist above the valley's rim, it is possible 
for every one to visit the Tuolumne. It is a hard trip, 
but not too hard, they tell me, for all of us to see the 
canyon and the water-wheels." 

So they broke camp early one morning and travelled 
on horseback up the long, rocky Tenaya Canyon. At 
Tenaya Lake they rested and spent the night in a 
public camp. The next day they fished the Tuolumne 
River, and spent that night in another camp at Tuo- 
lumne Meadows. The third day they visited the 
canyon. 

Of all the noble sights in the Yosemite National Park, 
Margaret and Jack afterward declared that their 



186 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

close-by view of the water-wheels was the most excit- 
ing. The canyon tilts sharply till it drops to the level 
of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, and down these slopes 
the Tuolumne River finds no resting-place. For sev- 
eral miles it is a continuous succession of cascades, 
waterfalls, and swift rushes over long granite slopes at 
sharp angles. Some day a greater poem will be written 
about Tuolumne water than that by which Robert 
Southey made the falls at Ladore celebrated through- 
out the world; for the Tuolumne water is many times 
as stirring a spectacle as the water that "comes down 
at Ladore"; in fact, it is itself one of nature's most 
wonderful poems. 

Again and again in these sharp slopes between water- 
falls the water strikes cross ledges of rock and rises high 
in the air, describing long, sweeping arcs before it again 
joins the rushing river below. Some of these half- 
circles of white frothing water rise fifty feet before 
they begin to curve downward. To sit on the sloping 
granite banks alongside of a giant water-wheel, with 
falls above and falls below, and this great frothing 
wheel turning swiftly in front, is to enjoy a sensation 
which will not dim in remembrance. 

It was a day of few words for the Jeffersons. Not 
even the children were moved to break the silence. 



. THE INCOMPARABLE VALLEY 187 

"Isn't it queer," said Jack, "how you don't wa.nt to 
shout here ? I just feel like looking awhile and then 
going back into the woods and get over it." 

"It is a fitting climax for this wonderful Yosemite," 
said Aunt Jane. 




It is a paradise of squirrels 



IX 

A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 

SOME OF THE TREES IN THE SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK WERE 
GROWING THERE WHEN PHARAOH MADE CAPTIVE THE 
CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 

NOW there arose up a new king over Egypt which 
knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, 
Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more 
and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wdsely 
with them; lest they multiply and it come to pass 
that, when there falleth out any war, they join also 
with our enemies and fight against us, and so get them 
up out of the land. 

Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to 
afflict them with their burdens. . . . And they made 
their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in 
brick, and all manner of service in the field; all their 
service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor. 

While Pharaoh was afflicting the children of Israel, 
as related in the first chapter of Exodus, upon the 
opposite side of the world a seed so small that one 
must have looked closely to recognize it as a seed, 
sank into the warm soil of a gentle valley beneath the 

188 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 189 

saw-toothed snowy mountains of what is now called 
California, and, in due time, thrust forth a slender 
green stalk. This stalk grew rapidly, for the soil was 
rich, the air soft, and the sheltering forest warm and 
shady. The first summer it grew a foot or more, 
straight as an arrow, and put forth small branches and 
several plumes of feathery, pine-like leaves that seemed 
unduly large for so small a stalk. In winter it was 
buried under many feet of snow, and protected from 
the frost and ice. 

The second summer it sprang strongly upward, so 
that its sharp-pointed top brushed the belly of the 
deer bounding over it to escape the wolves. 

Its tenth summer discovered it a vigorous young 
tree with sturdy branches. Its foliage now was thick 
and brilliantly green, each large hanging plume heavy 
with carved waving filaments. It was a thing of 
beauty. A cousin to the firs and pines, its neighbors, 
it far surpassed those of its own age in charm of outline 
and in softness of foliage and color. It surpassed the 
pines in height, also; it looked over their heads to its 
own brothers here and there discernible among the 
red and gray stems of the old forest. 

Many snows fell and melted, many summers came 
and went, and the strong and ambitious yotmg sequoia 



190 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

forged its pointed shaft aloft. While it was still an 
infant it overtopped the lodge-poles. Still a sturdy 
child, it overmatched the adult oaks. Its trunk was 
spindling but erect, the figure of aspiring youth. 

A thousand years after Pharaoh had led the Jews 
captive into Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, 
besieged Jehoiachin, the young King of Judah, in his 
splendid city of Jerusalem. 

And he carried out thence (II Kings 24 : 13) all the 
treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures 
of the King's house, and cut to pieces all the vessels of 
gold which Solomon, King of Israel, had made in the 
temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said. And he 
carried away all Jerusalem and all the princes and all 
the mighty men of valor, over ten thousand captives, 
and all the craftsmen and smiths. . . . And he car- 
ried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the King's 
mother and the King's wives and his officers, and the 
mighty of the land; those carried he in captivity from 
Jerusalem to Babylon. 

While Nebuchadnezzar in his turn was wrecking ven- 
geance upon the unhappy children of Israel, the sequoia 
of the warm valley beneath the saw-toothed snowy 
mountains was developing its splendid youth. It had 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 191 



outlived many genera- 
tions of lesser trees. For- 
ests of sugar-pine, Doug- 
las fir, yellow pine, maple, 
birch, and oak had arisen, 
attained maturity, and 
passed back into the earth 
that bore them. They 
had been succeeded by 
new forests, ever renew- 
ing themselves, ever 
struggling into view of 
the cloudless summer 
sky, ever crumbling into 
decay. 

And still the sequoia, 
glorious in its own bound- 
ing life, forged upward. 
Its lowest branches were 
even with the tops of 
many trees now decades 
past maturity. But the 
sequoia was still young. 
Youth was written in its 
noble aspect, in its proud 



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L ^^ra. J 




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WmS''}'.^!!9S' 


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Pa 


^^■■■:T-: ■■■ ,^-i^^- 


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""wm^mm^L 


titm 


^^^^KSKBB^^J^M 




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Sequoia-tree about 1,500 years old. Ob- 
serve its rounded top and closely 
folded mantle of foliage 



192 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

carriage, in the rigid power of its bent limbs, in the 
vividness of its tawny green. But now the plumes 
that had numbered thousands in the days of Pharaoh, 
numbered hundreds of thousands. And the pointed 
top which then bored so swiftly upward had grown 
broad and rounded. It was a crown, for the Prince 
had become a King. 

Now the sequoia towered even with the tallest and 
noblest of its majestic cousins, the sugar-pines. But 
it had outlived many generations of sugar-pines. 
Those which now rivalled it were of younger, swifter 
growth; but even they had reached the height of tide; 
soon they, too, would drop under the winter gales. 

Six centuries passed and Christ was born in Beth- 
lehem. Israel had found her vmconquerable King, and 
mankind had found its Saviour. 

And on that first Christmas Day the sequoia of the 
valley beneath the saw-toothed snowy mountains, 
King of Trees, lifted its calm head far above the for- 
est's highest top. It was the first to greet the rising 
sun that Christmas morning, the last to watch its 
setting glory. Nobly it lifted its thickening red trunk 
above the snows, and spread its glistening evergreen 
to the crisp air. 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 193 

The sequoia now had attained its greatest height. 
It towered above all others. Its stem had broadened 
at the base, and rose thick and straight, tapering 
slightly to its crown. A hundred feet above the 
ground its diameter was greater than the base of the 
giant pines around it. Two hundred feet up its diam- 
eter was greater than the base of any except the very 
largest pines. It rose like a cathedral column. 

Many feet above the ground, it thrust out at right 
angles its lowest branches, thicker than the trunks of 
most forest-trees, the elbows sharply bent. For the 
sequoia did not spread its robes ; it wrapped its foliage 
about it, as a Roman wrapped his toga. Its leafy out- 
line was erect and slender, as perpendicular as its 
mighty trunk; a broad column supporting, under the 
sky, its dome of living green. The King of Trees, 
indeed ! 

Other centuries passed. The Roman Empire rose 
to its fall. Barbarous hordes warred over the division 
of Europe. Swaying boundaries settled. Civilization 
followed Christianity. Art followed civilization. Lit- 
erature followed art. Commerce discovered the world. 
Freedom was born. The Americas were developed. 
Science transformed living. 



194 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

And during the nineteen hundred years from Christ's 
birth until to-day, years of turmoil and infinite striv- 
ing, the sequoia in the valley beneath the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains has grown into its splendid maturity. 
Look at it to-day before you. Note its magnificent 
bulk. Note its aged, knotted limbs, its thinning crown 
of foliage, its masterful air of the fulness of life. Look 
well at it, standing there in fullest majesty, thick- 
limbed, powerful, keenly alive to the uttermost tip 
of its farthest plume, sternly beautiful, manifestly 
King, the biggest and oldest and the most lordly living 
thing. 

''Doctor McKinley," demanded Margaret, **do you 
mean to say you are talking about this very tree here 
right in front of us?" 

"I do," said Doctor McKinley, **I have been telling 
you the history of the General Sherman Tree — right 
here in front of us." 

"Goodness !" said Margaret, '*I thought it was just 
a story. And so you mean to say — Oh ! I wish I had 
known ! It would have been so much more real." 

"Yes, I do mean to say that this tree that you have 
just been dancing around probably began growing 
when Pharaoh took the children of Israel into cap- 




Photograph by Lindliy luldy 

General Sherman Tree, from south side 



19G THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

tivity, and has been growing right here during all the 
history of the world since. Do you wonder that it 
has become thirty-six and a half feet in diameter? 
There have been bigger sequoias even than this. 
John Muir actually counted the rings of a fallen giant 
that must have begun to grow while the Tower of 
Babel was building — that is, in the eleventh chapter 
of Genesis. That tree had more than four thousand 
rings. Of course the age of the General Sherman Tree 
can only be estimated, as it is still standing. One 
must count the rings to make sure. But it is about 
thirty-six hundred years old. There is a fallen tree 
a few miles back in the forest that may have been as 
large as this. We'll visit it to-morrow, and walk 
through its trunk." 

"There must be a lot of timber in this tree," said 
practical Jack. 

"Sawed into inch boards, this tree would make a 
box large enough to hold the greatest steamship ever 
built. Yes, and put a lid on the box. It will help you 
to realize the thickness of this trunk to know that a 
hole could be made in it large enough to drive a wagon 
and two street-cars through it, side by side, and still 
leave the sides sufficiently strong to support the tree." 

"Oh," said Margaret, gazing up at it, "if I could 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 197 

only make the girls at home understand how truly, 
awfully big it is." 

"Let me give you a recipe," said Doctor McKinley. 
"When you go home take the girls to a church, or 




FItoCojirapk by Lindlcy Eddy 



Bear cubs are numerous and friendly 

other large building, with an empty space or park ad- 
joining. Get Jack to measure out against the front 
of the church a distance equal to the diameter of 
the General Sherman Tree, thirty-six feet, six inches, 



198 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

and drive in stakes big enough to see plainly at a 
distance. 

"Then measure back on the ground in front of the 
church a distance equal to the height of the tree, two 
hundred and eighty feet, and stand there facing the 
church. Then look hard at the stakes and imagine 
the trunk of the tree filling the space between them. 
Then raise 3^our eyes slowly and imagine this broad 
trunk rising up against the sides of the church and 
above it. When you are looking upward at an angle 
of forty-five degrees you will be looking at the spot in 
the sky where the top of the tree would be if it were 
growing in front of the church." 

'* Gee ! " said Jack. " What fun ! But how will you 
know when you are looking up at an angle of forty- 
five degrees?" 

**That is quite easy," said Doctor McKinley. *'Get 
a large piece of stiff cardboard, and cut it exactly 
square. Then draw a line from its opposite corners and 
cut the card along this line. That will give you two 
right-angled triangles. Hold one of these in front of 
your face so that the shorter base will exactly parallel 
the ground ; tack it to a tree or pole so that you may 
be sure about it. Then with your eye at the lower 
comer, glance uj:) the slanting side, and you will have 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 199 

your angle of forty-five degrees. Where the point in 
the sky which you then see intersects the imaginary 
line of the trunk rising above the church, you will have 




Photograph by Edward S. Curtis 



A wonderful i)lace to camj) out 



the height of the General Sherman Tree if it grew in 
front of your church." 

"Oh, how splendid!" said Margaret, jumping up 
and down in great excitement. "We'll do it the min- 
ute we get home." 



200 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"But do you understand just how to do it?" asked 
Doctor McKinley. 

"No," said Margaret, "but what do I care? Jack 
does. Don't you. Jack?" 

Jack went over the plan carefully with Doctor 
McKinley, and made notes and diagrams. Then he 
nodded confidently to Margaret. 

"All right, kid," he said, "I've got it. We'll get the 
girls and do it the minute we get home. I know just 
the place." 

This was their first afternoon in the Sequoia National 
Park. They had come in by automobile stage from the 
railroad-station in the valley, and had settled at the 
camp in the Giant Forest. They had found Doctor 
McKinley awaiting them. Their first move, naturally, 
had been to visit the General Sherman Tree ; they 
spent the afternoon there. 

"Why are all those sticks hanging to the bark?" 
asked Margaret. 

Uncle Billy investigated. He threw bits of wood at 
them, and finally succeeded in dislodging one, which 
he examined carefully. 

"It has been pointed with a knife," he said, "and 
has somebody's name written on the side of it." 

Doctor McKinley laughed. 




Sunrise in the Giant Forest 



^0^ THE TOP OF THP: CONTINENT 

''Those people who have the craze for carving or 
writing their names everywhere," he said, "are stopped 
here by the rules. Government imposes fines upon 
those who deface the big trees. So that is the way 
they get around the rules. It is harmless enough. It 
does not hurt the spongy bark to shoot a sharpened 
stick into it. The bark is a foot and a half thick." 

'Tm going to do it, too," cried Margaret. 

But Jack was already sharpening a stick, and after 
many tries he succeeded in so throwing it that the 
pointed end penetrated and held the bark ten feet or 
more above their heads. 

**It is only polite," Margaret said, **to leave our 
cards when calling. General Sherman won't forget 
us, now." 

The next morning's walk through the tangled Giant 
Forest was an experience full of pleasure. The ex- 
treme luxuriance of growth astonished them. Gigantic 
sugar-pines here reached their limit of two hundred 
feet, and the Douglas fir vied with them. Yellow 
pines, their bark figured like alligator travelling-bags, 
Margaret said, abounded; monsters sometimes even 
equalling the firs. The variety of cone-bearing trees 
was surprising. There were cedars of magnificent pro- 
portions. All the pines and firs were festooned with 




Photograph by Lindley Eddy 



Sugar-pines in the Giant Forest 



204 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

bright green moss, which hung in long plumes from 
their trunks and boughs. The sequoias alone carried 
no moss. 

But in this forest of conifers were found also decidu- 
ous trees in large numbers. Live-oak abounded, and 
oaks of many other kinds. Maples, sweet-scented 
bay, birches of large girth with curling coppery paper 
bark, grew in thickets; while passage was often diffi- 
cult through the luxuriant tangle of bushes of innu- 
merable kinds and varied beauty. And here and there, 
sometimes alone, generally in groups scattered or closely 
bunched, rose the gigantic purplish-red columns of the 
sequoias. It was also a forest of wild flowers and a 
forest of birds. 

The children shouted whenever they broke through 
a tangle to find before them one of the towering mon- 
sters. There were so many of them ! They found 
the Abraham Lincoln Tree, whose diameter is thirty- 
one feet, and the William McKinley Tree, which, 
though of smaller girth, towers eleven feet higher than 
the General Sherman Tree. They greatly admired 
the perfection of the Theodore Roosevelt Tree, one of 
the very noblest in form and color in the Giant Forest. 
They wondered at the many groups whose trees stood 
close together like cathedral columns. 




Group of sequoias in Ihe Giant Forest 



5^06 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"How many sequoias arc there?" asked Mrs. Jeffer- 
son. 

**More than a milHon, big and Httle, in the Sequoia 
National Park," said Doctor McKinley. "Twelve 
thousand of them are more than ten feet in diameter. 
There are also a few in the Yosemite and elsewhere." 

"I want to sleep out of doors and look up into one 
of these groves lighted by camp-fires," said Aunt Jane. 
"I want to wake in the morning with this noble roof 
overhead." 

Aunt Jane's wish was granted before they left the 
Giant Forest, and it proved an experience that none of 
them forgot. It seldom rains in the Giant Forest 
during the summer, and sleeping out of doors was safe 
and easy. 

After lunch they started for the fallen tree, but 
Doctor McKinley, who had promised to guide them, 
could not be found. So they secured another guide. 
Uncle Billy and Aunt Jane were missing, too. As they 
approached the tree, they overtook Doctor McKinley 
and Aunt Jane, who had started in advance, and were 
walking slowly. 

"Where's Uncle Billy?" demanded Margaret. 

"I think he said he was going fishing," said Aunt 
Jane innocently. 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 207 

Margaret whispered to Jack. 

"Didn't I tell you?" she asked. "Uncle Billy was 
as gay as a lark in the Yosemite, and here, as soon as 
Doctor McKinley arrives, he gets glum and runs off 
by himself." 

"I wouldn't run away if I was Uncle Billy," said 
Jack valiantly. "I'd fight him." 

"Yes, you would," said Margaret scornfully. "The 
same way you fought the bear in the Yellowstone." 

Jack changed the subject. 

The fallen monster proved to be a crowning delight. 
It had been a tree of enormous size, but now was 
prostrate. The trunk was embedded in the rich soil. 
Its enormous roots were fully exposed, however, and 
through them the hollow trunk could be entered by a 
score or more of men and horses. In fact, a large party 
was there already with a motion -picture camera. The 
operator was turning the crank upon a party emerging 
from the great hole in the roots. 

The temptation was too great for Jack. He broke 
away on the run, dashed into the hole, and marched 
out at the tail of the last horse, his head held high, his 
thumbs caught in the armholes of his waistcoat. 

Margaret was scandalized. 

"There!" she exclaimed. "That's the cheekiest 



208 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

and most impudent thing I ever saw a boy do. You've 
spoiled the man's picture." 

Jack was well scolded by his mother, too, who fully 
agreed with Margaret, though she chose her phrases 
more carefully. Uncle Tom seconded her, and poor 
Jack was quite crestfallen. 

Mrs. Jefferson apologized to the leader of the party, 
but he made light of it. 

**It will be a neat touch," he said. "A bit of invol- 
untary comic is a good thing sometimes. The boy 
was so immensely proud of himself that it will make 
the audience laugh. I'm glad he did it." 

After the motion-picture people had gone Doctor 
McKinley led his party a hundred feet or more up the 
fallen trunk, and showed them a large hole through 
which a man and horse might enter. 

**A few years ago," he said, "it was possible to ride 
your horse into this hole, pass through the trunk 
mounted, and come out through the hole in the root. 
The spring rains, however, have washed so much soil 
inside the trunk that it is impossible to get a horse 
through now. But it will be easy for us to enter afoot." 

The interior was an apartment more than a hundred 
feet long, and from eight to fifteen feet wide. The 
floor was flat, beaten soil; the roof a w^ooden arch. 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE 209 

"It would be the splendidest place to live," said 
Margaret admiringly. 

"And that is no fancy," said Doctor McKinley. 
"Hollow trunks like these were shelters for Indians 




A fallen monster 

long before white men discovered the sequoias, and 
they frequently have served as wilderness homes for 
hunters and explorers and prospectors. John Muir 
often lived in them during the years he wandered alone 
through the Sierra Nevada Mountains studying the 



210 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

sequoia-trees; I have no doubt he has slept many 
peaceful nights in this very tree. By the way, Mar- 
garet, do you know why the Spaniards named the 
great mountains back of us the Sierra Nevada ? " 

Margaret shook her head. 

** Sierra Nevada means the saw-toothed, snowy 
mountains because " 

**0h!" she interrupted, '*I see now. That's why 
you called them that in the story." 

Jack was missing. They called him but without 
reply. They hurried out and shouted his name. Mrs. 
Jefferson, thinking of the tangled wilderness they had 
come through, was seriously alarmed. Aunt Jane was 
distracted; Uncle Tom was more vexed than worried; 
Margaret was scared and tearful. When it was evi- 
dent that he was out of hearing of their shouts, they 
gathered by the great root to determine what to do. 
Doctor McKinley tried to be comforting; he said the 
park rangers surely would find him before nightfall, 
but Mrs. Jefferson was not comforted. At best, the 
nights were very cold in the big woods. They talked 
earnestly. Margaret began to sob aloud. 

Suddenly a loud, gleeful shout brought the confer- 
ence to a startled finish. There sat Jack, grinning 
happily, upon the highest up-standing root of the tree, 



A LONG LIFE AND A HAPPY ONE !211 




Suddenly a loud, gleeful shout 

brought the conference 

to a startled finish 



perhaps forty feet above 

^ their heads. But, as the Jef- 

fersons looked up at him, his 

^ smile faded ; it became instantly 

\/.r\ apparent to him that what had 

seemed so good a joke to him 

was no joke to them. 

ml\ Mrs. Jefferson, indeed, turned 

quite pale, and called: 

** Don't move, Jack! Stay right 



212 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

where you are and hold tight. Uncle Tom and Doctor 
McKinley will come up and get you. Oh, I wish we 
had a rope. Look out or you'll fall." 

**I won't fall," cried Jack; "I'll climb down myself. 
I won't have any one come for me." 

Uncle Tom already was rapidly climbing the tangled 
roots. Disregarding the protests from below. Jack 
hurriedly began to scramble down. It would be dis- 
graceful to be helped. But his haste was his undoing. 
Full a dozen feet from the ground, he slipped and fell 
face downward. 

Doctor McKinley, waiting below, caught him cleverly 
and lowered him safely to the ground. It is better 
right here to drop the curtain on the scene. 

Later on Jack said to Margaret: 

** Doctor McKinley is the only one that didn't jaw 
me. He's all right. I hope he gets her." 

"Well, I don't," replied Margaret. "I'm for Uncle 
Billy, every time." 



X 

THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 

THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO, IN ARIZONA, IS ONE 
OF THE world's MOST WONDERFUL SPECTACLES 

TRUE to his promise, Mr. Jefferson, who had 
business in Los Angeles, met the party there on 
its way to the Grand Canyon. It was a noisy re- 
union. For once Jack was excelled in his particular 
specialty. Margaret clung to her father so persis- 
tently that the rest of the family had to beg for a 
chance; and that night when, after repeated remind- 
ers from her mother, Margaret reluctantly went to 
bed, Mr. Jefferson assured her that he was now fully 
prepared to score a hundred on any examination 
paper upon national parks that she could prepare for 
him. 

The next afternoon, as their automobiles were re- 
turning from a long neighborhood drive, Margaret 
rapturously exclaimed: 

''And to-night we vStart for the Grand Canyon !" 
"Why wait till to-night?" asked Doctor McKinley, 
who still accompanied them, "when we have it right 
here ?" 

213 



(£14 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Where?" cried astonished Margaret. 

They were skirting the edge of an arroyo which in 
early spring carried a roaring torrent of flood water 
from the mountains to the ocean, but which now was 
nearly dry. Its banks were many feet deep, and its 
broad bed was covered with rocks. 

''You are not going to tell me that this is the Grand 
Canyon," said Margaret disdainfully. 

"No," said Doctor McKinley, "but let us stop the 
car at the next bend and see what we shall see." 

They stopped the car and walked across the plain 
to a broad, deep ditch, through whose channel trickled 
a small stream. 

"There!" said Doctor McKinley. 

"Oh!" Margaret exclaimed. "Of course I knew 
all the time the Grand Canyon could not be here. 
You're joking us. Doctor McKinley." 

"Some joke," muttered Jack. "We've walked a 
precious long way to see just a big old ditch. I've 
seen a million like that back home." 

"Yes, you've seen several," Doctor McKinley re- 
plied. "But this is the Grand Canyon just the same; 
and so are your ditches at home — in miniature." 

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Jack. But Mar- 
garet was still mystified. 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 215 

"Now let us see what has happened here to account 
for so tiny a stream having so big a ditch," said Doc- 
tor McKinley. "You will notice that this broad, flat, 
sandy plain seems level, but that, nevertheless, it 
slopes ever so gently westward from those foot-hills 
several miles back near the mountains. Those hills 
and this plain become saturated with the early spring 
rains, and this is the stream which drains them. 
To-day, in the dry autumn, it is so small you can 
scarcely see its current, but in the late winter and 
spring a great deal of water flows through it. During 
its turbulent mgnths it has been burrowing deeper and 
deeper into the soil, until now, after many years, it 
lies far below its original level. 

"Now just above here, you see, still a smaller stream 
runs in from the side, draining the plain from the 
north. Many of these small streams enter it from 
both sides. They are all dry now, but from the depth 
of their ditches you will see that in the wet months 
they are fairly good-sized tributaries. 

"Now let us look attentively at the big ditch. 
Here the current swirled around a deposit of stiff clay, 
leaving a pyramid rising from the bottom. Over here 
it swirled around those sandstone slabs, several of 
which stand up like spires. Now on one side, now on 



216 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

the other, it has left mimic plateaus abutting the deeper 
central channel. Where this little tributary stream 
enters, we see a high cliff, probably of stiff conglom- 
erate rock, rising almost to the original level. The 
tributary was not strong or constant enough to wear 
it away, and so it worked around it, digging its channel 
out of the softer earth and sand. 

"In this way, during many, many years of succeed- 
ing flood times, this stream and its tributaries have 
succeeded in scooping out an astonishingly big ditch 
from the bottom of which rise many cliffs and spires 
and plateaus which the current was not strong enough 
to wash away." 

"Gee," said Jack. "That is interesting. It is the 
first interesting ditch I ever saw." 

"No," said Doctor McKinley, "that is not quite 
true. You mean that it is the first ditch of any kind 
you ever really looked at. It is interesting only be- 
cause you understand it. All ditches are interesting 
when you understand them. And all ditches are alike, 
even the Grand Canyon." 

"Is the Grand Canyon a ditch?" asked Margaret, 
big-eyed in surprise. 

"Yes," said Doctor McKinley, "the Grand Canyon 
is nothine but a ditch. The State of Arizona is a 



^18 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

great plain — like this. It slopes seaward from great 
mountains — like this. Its waters drain into a stream 
— like this. The stream has worn a ditch through the 
plain — like this. That is why, before you went there, 
I wanted to show you this miniature Grand Canyon, 
which I ran across one day a few years ago while on 
a walking tour." 

"But the real Grand Canyon is a lot bigger than this 
ditch, isn't it?" asked Margaret anxiously. 

"Well, rather," laughed Doctor McKinley. "This 
ditch may be ten feet deep; the Grand Canyon is six 
thousand feet deep. This ditch may be a hundred 
feet wide; the Grand Canyon is twenty miles wide. 
This ditch is carved out of brown, sandy loam; the 
Grand Canyon is carved out of marvellously colored 
sandstone rock. The mimic mud and sandy cliffs and 
domes you see here are gigantic carved and minareted 
stone towers there. 

"But, though so different, really they are precisely 
the same. Both are identical works of erosion. This 
tiny stream drains perhaps six or eight square miles. 
The Colorado River drains three hundred thousand 
square miles. Now let us get back to dinner." 

It was a silent, awestricken party that stood upon 
the rim of the Grand Canyon the following day. Even 



220 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

Jack had nothing to say, and, when Doctor McKinley 
began to explain its wonders. Aunt Jane stopped him 
with a gesture. 

"Later on," she whispered. "This is the time to 
just feel." 

She and Mrs. Jefferson sank upon a rock and said 
nothing for nearly an hour. The others grouped near 
them. Margaret and Jack walked some distance away 
with Uncle Tom, but they quickly returned. 

"It's lonesome out there," said Margaret shivering. 
She nestled close to her mother. 

The morning sun cast the shadows of the near rim 
darkly upon the depths, while it bathed with glowing 
light the red and green strata of the opposite side. 
From far below arose a gigantic city of monster painted 
cathedrals. An eagle soared slowly below them. The 
men pointed to different features in the marvellous 
spectacle and nodded silently to each other. 

"Its like church, isn't it, Mother?" Margaret whis- 
pered softly. 

The sun rose higher ; the sunshine in the depths grad- 
ually devoured the shadows. After a while Jack said: 

"Somehow I — I feel kind o' — good." 

All laughed. Aunt Jane clapped her hands. The 
two uncles moved about and lighted cigarettes. 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD ^^21 

*'We had better come out here to Hve," said Mr. 
Jefferson. 

Mrs. Jefferson laughed with a little catch in her voice. 
The men began to talk in loud tones. A strain of 
emotion, which all had felt but not realized, seemed to 
lift. 

They spent all that day upon the canyon's rim. 
They watched the trail travellers below through the 
telescope. They chatted with the Indians. They 
examined the Powell Monument. They walked miles 
and gazed into the amazing gulf from many points of 
view. All day Mrs. Jefferson was strangely silent; 
and brilliant rosy spots glowed in Aunt Jane's cheeks. 
Neither wanted to leave the rim even long enough for 
luncheon. 

Late in the afternoon Doctor McKinley drew Aunt 
Jane to one side and talked earnestly. 

"Do you see that?" asked Margaret. 

"See what?" Jack rejoined. 

"Aunt Jane doesn't want to go with him." 

"Well, what does she go for, then?" asked Jack, 
watching them. "Like fun she doesn't want to go! 
Look at her smile at him. How funny she looks back 
at Mother!" 

"She's awfully nervous," observed Margaret. "I 



222 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

think she wants Mother to go, too. But Mother 
doesn't even see her. She's just absorbed in that 
canyon." 

"You think you know an awful lot," said Jack sar- 
castically. 

**I do," said Margaret with a wise nod. "At least 
I know a lot more than you do. You can't even see." 

"But I can beat you rtmning," said Jack. 

"Come, children, take a walk with us," called Uncle 
Tom gayly, as he and Uncle Billy swung by. 

"No, I don't want them," said Uncle Billy shortly. 
"I want a real walk." 

"Gee, isn't he the savage one!" cried Jack resent- 
fully as the two passed on. "Now what have we ever 
done to him ? Why shouldn't we go if we want to ? 
I can walk as fast as he can. What's the matter with 
him, anyway?" 

"To think of your not even knowing that!" ex- 
claimed Margaret. 

"Say," said Jack critically, "I never saw a girl so 
stuck on herself as you are." 

The next morning they breakfasted early in prepa- 
ration for an overnight trip into the canyon. The 
guide was waiting. Mr. Jefferson had picked out the 
mules the night before. 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD ^223 




Photograph by Eerford CouiHiik 



Indians above the rim 



"Are we going all the way down?" asked Margaret 
over her oatmeal. "All the way to that teenty bit of 
a river that we saw yesterday from the Point with the 
funny Indian name?" 

"Straight to the river," said Mr. Jefferson. "But 
it isn't such a tiny river as it looks from up here. In 



2^24 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

fact it is one of the great rivers of America. From the 
source of its largest confluent, the Green River, to its 
mouth in the Gulf of California, it is two thousand 
miles long." 

Doctor McKinley came down late, the only one not 
in riding clothes. 

"Have you forgotten," asked Mrs. Jefferson in sur- 
prise, "that we are going to the river this morning?" 

"I am suddenly called East," he explained. "It 
is a disappointment, of course; I had expected to see 
this delightful party to its finish. But now it is im- 
possible." 

Doctor McKinley' s tone was one which forbade 
questions. But they all recalled that at lunch the day 
before he spoke of remaining with the party, even of 
accompanying them as far as Chicago on the way East. 

Nothing more was said. Doctor McKinley ate a 
hasty breakfast and saw them mount their mules. 
Then he said good-by. Uncle Billy, under Margaret's 
watchful eye, looked keenly into Doctor McKinley's 
face as he shook hands with a cordiality he had never 
shown before. Then, with a loud whoop, he spurred 
his mule to the head of the line, shouting gayly: 

"Forward ! March ! We are going to have a won- 
derful, wonderful day!" 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 225 

Margaret drew alongside of Jack. 

**I know," she said in a low tone, "why Doctor 
McKinley left so suddenly, and it wasn't business at 
all." 

"What was it, then?" Jack demanded. 

"Something happened on that walk he took with 
Aunt Jane before dinner, yesterday. He asked her to 
marry him, and she wouldn't. That's the reason he 
went away so suddenly this morning." 

" How do you know ? " Jack demanded. " Did Aunt 
Jane tell you?" 

"No, goose. That's the last thing in the world 
Aunt Jane -would ever tell." 

"How do you know, then?" 

"Because I watched Aunt Jane this morning, and 
she wasn't even surprised when Doctor McKinley told 
us he was going away; but she blushed a lot." 

"Well, you're too much for me, the way you guess 
things," said Jack thoughtfully. Presently he added: 
"Well, I don't care. He tells good stories, and I'd 
like to have had him for an uncle. But he wouldn't 
do, anyway. Why, he's an old man. I heard Mother 
say he must be every day of thirty." 

It proved a wonderful day, indeed. The safe trail 
descended the precipitous wall in short zigzags, and 



226 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

wound its long, sinuous way across broad plateaus 
and around the bases of enormous cathedral-like 
rocks. 

"It is like dropping into a paint-pot," said Mrs. 
Jefferson. "I am fairly intoxicated with color." 

"And these astonishingly fantastic shapes!" said 
Aunt Jane, smiling happily. "Seen from above they 
were amazing, but, looked up at from below, they are 
unreal. I'm dreaming them, not seeing them." 

"We are living in the Arabian Nights," said Mar- 
garet. "These aren't rocks at all, they're giants' 
palaces." 

"Sure thing," said Uncle Billy sportively. "Pretty 
soon a giaour will pop out of one of them and gather 
us all up for dinner. We'll make a fine juicy stew for 
him." 

"Don't you feel the relief of a broken sky-line?" 
asked Mr. Jefferson. "Yesterday, looking into the 
canyon from above, we never could get away from that 
deadly level horizon. The picture everywhere was 
framed in straight rims. But to-day, looking up from 
below, we lose sight of the rim and see the sky-line 
broken by the spires and minarets of these Aladdin 
palaces." 

"It is some rcHef," Mrs. Jefferson admitted. "But 




Photograph by Fred Harvey 



The trail into the canyon 



228 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

I shall not let you belittle the view from the rim. 
That, after all, is the great view. But one must see 
this, too. Each is perfect of its kind, and both are 
necessary to any real comprehension and appreciation." 

It was Uncle Billy's great day, sure enough. He 
devoted himself to the children, joked constantly with 
Margaret and ran mule-races with Jack over some of 
the level stretches. He found the best echoes for 
them and shouted louder than Jack. 

"He's trying to make up for being mean to us yes- 
terday about that walk," Jack whispered to Margaret. 

** It's no such thing," Margaret retorted. ** He didn't 
even know he was mean to us. No, that isn't why 
he's so jolly. It's something altogether different." 

Jack looked at Margaret sharply, but said nothing. 
He wanted to know what she meant, but would not 
confess his ignorance. He was beginning to feel a 
little more respect for girls. 

Having their own separate party and, as Mr. Jeffer- 
son put it, "all the time there is in the world," they 
frequently dismounted to rest and enjoy the varying 
views. 

"This everlasting going down is just a little trying," 
said Mrs. Jefferson. "If only we could cHmb up a 
bit now and then for a change it would help." 




Plioto^rapli liy lU'iirgc K. Kim; 



On lli(' brink of the river's gorge 



230 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"But it is perfectly safe," said Uncle Tom. 

"Oh, absolutely," said Mrs. Jefferson. "The trails 
are so broad. I only want a little change." 

"There was an old Scotchman went down with me 
last year who had never been on horseback," said the 
guide. "He was eighty-two years old and a good 
sport. He didn't mind the steep trails, but he was 
terribly nervous about the mule. 

How must I sit ? ' he asked me anxiously. 

"'Right straight up,' I said. 'Just rest easy and 
leave it all to the mule. No, don't bend over. Hold' 
your body at right angles to the mule. That way.' 

"Well, that was up on the rim before we started 
down, and the ground, of course, was level. But he 
obeyed me literally about sitting at right angles to 
the mule, and, the first sharp grade we struck, of 
course he fell clear over the mule's head onto the 
trail." 

"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Jefferson, "and was he 
awfully hurt?" 

"He never admitted it," said the guide. "But he 
was Scotch, you know, and wouldn't. The old chap 
rolled off the trail and sprawled face down the edge 
of a rock about two hundred feet steep. I shouted to 
him: 'Lie still and I'll get you. Shut your eyes so 



THE (iKEATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD (^31 

you won't get dizzy.' But he was on his feet in a 
minute. 

"*0h, I've cHmbed hills all my life,' he said. *It 
ain't them that bothers me; it's the durn mule.'" 

They ate lunch by the trail side, near a stream. 
The final descent to the river's edge was inspiring. 
Every turn of the corkscrew trail disclosed new beauties 
and, when at last they dismounted beside the broad, 
swelling, surging river, the children shouted with ex- 
citement. 

They were in the bottom of a gorge whose cliffs rose 
steeply several thousand feet on either side. Above 
these cliffs, and of course invisible to them, stretched 
the broad levels of the greater canyon floor, across 
which they had passed ; but they could see some of the 
huge painted rock formations built upon it, and, here 
and there, beyond and above these, the dimmer out- 
lines of the distant rim. 

"Gee," said Jack, *Hhis sure is some place. But, 
Uncle Tom, what makes the water so muddy? It 
looks like thin brown paint." 

"The river, Jack, is still engaged in the work of 
cutting the Grand Canyon deeper and broader, 
and " 

"But, Uncle Tom," Jack interrupted, "how can 



232 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

soft water cut into hard rock ? I never really did un- 
derstand that." 

"The same way that the soft hands of workmen 
cut into hard rock," said Uncle Tom, smiling. "With 
tools, of course." 

"Tools?" cried Margaret. "What tools has the 
river i 

"Rocks and sand," said Uncle Tom. "Sand is the 
river's principal cutting tool. The hard, angular little 
grains of sand are swept rapidly down-stream by the 
fast current, each grain scratching the rock on the 
bottom as they all roll and tumble along. Billions of 
billions of sand grains keep scratching the rocks day 
and night, century after century. The river is like a 
strip of sandpaper two thousand miles long, perpetu- 
ally wearing down the bottom. Then, too, the stones 
and loose rocks help by bumping along with the cur- 
rent, denting the river's bottom and sides, and break- 
ing off pieces here and there. These loose rocks are 
continually making more sand, too. Don't you remem- 
ber those pot-holes in the rocks that we saw in Glacier 
and Yosemite ? See, there's a big one here in this rock." 

"Oh, yes," Jack exclaimed. "I remember you told 
me that loose rocks cut those big holes that looked 
like giants' bathtubs." 



234 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

**Now, Jack, I was the one who said they looked 
like giants' bathtubs," protested Margaret. 

**Well, I didn't say you weren't, did I?" Jack 
snapped. 

**This pot-hole," said Uncle Tom, **was made by 
the current pushing a loose rock around and around 
inside that hole, making it deeper and wider year 
after year." 

**But however did the river make this dreadful big 
canyon?" asked Margaret. 

**0h, yes," said Uncle Tom. ''Now, listen. A 
million tiny streams in Colorado and Idaho and Utah 
and Arizona are grinding down and scooping out their 
valleys, and carrying each its little burden of muddy 
sediment into the Grand and Green Rivers, which 
unite to form the Colorado River. All this sediment 
the river industriously sweeps down into the sea. 
Then, right here in the Grand Canyon, are many 
streams, like Bright Angel Creek, which we saw from 
the hotel, which continually work their way deeper 
into the rocks, and also empty their sediment into the 
river. In the spring, when the snows melt on the 
river, all these streams swell into torrents, and cut 
deeper and still deeper into the rocks. 

"The frost is busy, too. Every winter it chisels 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 235 

little pieces off all these great rocks; the spring rains 
wash them into the little streams; the little streams 
wash them into the river, and the river washes them 
into the sea." 

"Oh," said Margaret, "then it was really the river 
that, with the help of these millions of little streams, 
cut out the whole of the Grand Canyon? But, Uncle 
Tom, what became of all the stuff that it cut out ? 
Did the river really carry it all into the Gulf of Cali- 
fornia?" 

"Every atom of it," said Uncle Tom. "It took mil- 
lions and millions of years to do it, of course; but it is 
still at work. That is why the water is so muddy." 

They had climbed out upon a rocky point past which 
the river surged in swift cascades. 

"Nobody ever could keep a boat floating on this 
river, could he. Uncle Tom?" asked Jack. "No boat 
ever could run down those rapids." 

"Yes," said Uncle Tom, "boats have done it. 
Haven't you heard how the Grand Canyon was first 
explored?" 

Jack shook his head. 

"Do you mean to say that Doctor McKinley missed 
telling you the story of Major Powell's great adven- 
ture?" 



236 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

"Oh, tell us." Both children spoke at once, and 
the rest of the party gathered around. 

"Well," said Uncle Tom slowly, "that was one of 
the greatest of American adventures. For many years 
the Grand Canyon remained unexplored. Even the 
windings of the river's course were not defined. No 
Indian had ever entered the canyon. -The Indians 
feared it, believing that it was guarded by spirits. 

"The Indian legend is picturesque. There was a 
chief who mourned the death of his wife. No one could 
comfort him. One day the god Ta-vworts appeared 
to him and assured him that his wife was happy in 
Paradise. The chief replied that, if only he could be 
certain of her happiness, he would be satisfied. So 
Ta-vworts made a trail through the mountains which 
guarded Paradise, and through this he conducted the 
chief, who, seeing his wife happy, returned and mourned 
no more. The trail was the Grand Canyon. 

"But Ta-vworts, fearing that the chief would show 
others the trail to Paradise, caused a turbulent river 
to flow through it, which would destroy those who 
should try to travel it. He also stationed spirits to 
guard it. That river is the Colorado. 

"The Indians believed this legend, and told the 
white men that, deep in the great gorge were enor- 




Fholoiirapk by Uerjord Cowling 

Thunder-storm brooding over the canyon 



•238 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

mous waterfalls. They said that the river ran through 
dark underground passages. No man who entered 
passed through alive. 

"But there was one man who dared. His name 
was John Wesley Powell, and he was a school-teacher 
who afterward became a celebrated geologist. He had 
lost his right arm in the Civil War, but even that could 
not stop him. 

"These great canyons interested him, and he deter- 
mined to explore them. He got four open boats and 
filled their compartments with provisions for a long 
journey. He persuaded nine adventurous men to ac- 
company him, and, early in 1869, started far up on 
the Green River and floated down. Frequently he 
stopped to study the rocks, for this was a scientific 
expedition. 

"In late August, when he came to the head of the 
Grand Canyon, there were very few provisions left; 
half had been lost in an upset. But they went boldly 
in, nevertheless. They knew nothing of what would 
befall them. Perhaps they would rush over water- 
falls as high as Niagara; they did not know. Perhaps 
they would drop into the underground passage which 
the Indians had described; they did not know that, 
either. All they knew was that the walls were im- 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 239 

passably steep, and that the river rushed so swiftly 
into the great canyon that, once started, they never 
could return. They must go through to the end or 
die in the going. They were brave men, and they 
went on. 

"What made the passage all the more dangerous 
was that their food was nearly exhausted. Most of 
the flour they had left was wet; even their matches 
were wet. 

"But on they went. Often they embarked in their 
boats at the head of some long swift rapid whose end 
was hidden by a curved wall. Was there a waterfall 
at the end of the rapid ? Or were there rocks upon 
which their boats would be dashed to pieces? They 
did not know. It was too late to turn back. 

** Sometimes these rapids were so swift and rocky 
that they had to lower their boats, one by one, with 
ropes. Often they were thrown out by the tossing of 
the boats, and had to swim. Often the boats were 
upset ; indeed they lost all their scientific instruments, 
and part of their little remaining food in this way. 
One of the boats was broken to pieces, but the men 
in it were saved. 

"They never clearly knew where they were, for there 
were no landmarks. Sometimes a full day's labor only 



240 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

carried them a mile or two, so dangerous was the going. 
How long the canyon was they did not know. All 
they knew was that they were weary and cold and 
wet, that they could light no fires to warm themselves, 
and that they were hungry, and almost without food. 
No wonder that some of them were discouraged. The 
time came when none, even the intrepid Powell, really 
had much hope left of living to the end. But Powell's 
precious notes were safe in his pocket. That was his 
comfort. His body perhaps would be found, and the 
scientific notes saved. 

"There came a day when food was reduced to a 
little wet flour. That night four of the men went off 
by themselves to talk, and then returned and reported 
to Powell that they were going to desert. They ex- 
plained that they thought the gorge at that point 
could be climbed, and that they preferred to take the 
chances of finding a way up over the rim rather than 
to go on with the others to certain destruction. 

** Powell made no objections. He believed their 
chances of escape over the rim were very small, and 
told them so. There were no villages on the deserted 
plain above the rim where food could be had; and 
there were hostile Indians. But the deserters, now 
fairly terror-stricken, were not to be deterred. Powell 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 241 

offered them half of his handful of wet flour, but they 
declined it. The next morning they started on their 
perilous attempt, and Powell and his faithful five 
climbed into their boats and went on. 




Camping in the Grand Canyon 

"Hope was now almost abandoned. That day the 
last of the food was eaten, and the desperate party, 
with perhaps many days of danger and hardship be- 
fore them, toiled manfully on. ' But the very next 



242 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

morning their boats emerged at the foot of the canyon, 
where they fomid food and safety." 

"And what became of the four deserters?" asked 
Jack. 

"They were never seen again. In his book, *The 
Explorations of the Colorado River of the West,' 
Powell stated they were killed by Indians. He pub- 
lished the Indians' confessions." 

"Is that a true story?" asked Margaret. 

"It is history," said Uncle Tom. "Powell after- 
ward became Director of the United States Geological 
Survey, and a very famous man. We saw yesterday 
the rock shrine erected by the Department of the In- 
terior to his memory." 

The night the Jeffersons spent in camp in the depths 
of the Grand Canyon was in some respects the most 
memorable of their summer's experience. Sunset over 
the rim, the wonderfully deepening shadows, the glow 
of the camp-fire against the painted rock — these lin- 
gered long in memory. 

Soon after supper, Uncle Billy and Aunt Jane dropped 
out of the camp-fire gathering, and disappeared in the 
gloom. They were gone so long that Mrs. Jefferson 
became nervous. 

"I'm afraid they've lost their way," she said. 



THE GREATEST DITCH IN THE WORLD 243 

The children were still up when they wandered un- 
obtrusively back into camp. Uncle Billy swaggered 




"You little witch," she whispered, "I believe you know" 

nonchalantly to the fire and warmed his hands. He 
wore a broad and happy grin. Margaret looked at 
him attentively. Then she turned to Aunt Jane, who 
lingered in the background, her face lighted by the 



244 THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT 

blaze. Margaret approached her slowly, studying her 
rosy face and soft, happy eyes. Then she crept up, 
threw her arms around her neck, and whispered: 

"Oh, dear Aunt Jane, I am so, so, so awful glad." 

Aunt Jane, with a quick surprised movement, 
loosened the enfolding arms, and looked keenly into 
the child's face. Margaret nodded mysteriously. 
Aunt Jane gave a glad little cry and hugged her. 

''You little witch," she whispered, "I believe you 
know." 

**I do." Margaret nodded happily. 

Aunt Jane kissed her rapturously, and whispered: 

"But you must keep my secret." 

"Oh, I will," said Margaret. 

"Promise me." 

"I promise solemn," said Margaret. "See, I cross 
my heart." 

(The End.) 



H 15 88 % 




ROBERT STERLIN& \Mi 



